Convertible grills usually sell the conversion separately. Char-Broil’s Pro Series 4-Burner Gas Grill and Griddle with Side Burner, model 463281024, does not. Gas, griddle and charcoal all arrive together, ready on the first weekend.
Three ways to cook means three sets of hardware. You use one at a time and store the other two. A steel griddle plate is heavy, awkward, and hot when it comes off.
Whether this grill can griddle was never the interesting part. What matters is where the parts you are not cooking on go. Housing them has a cost.
32,000 BTUOutput across four main burners
802.9 sq inTotal cooking area
3 fuels, 1 fireboxGas, griddle and charcoal, all included
61.4 in wide, 187 lbWhat you have to find room for
First Impressions of the Char-Broil Pro Series 4-Burner
Assembly is a real afternoon. Char-Broil confirms it is required, but publishes no build time. The finished machine measures 61.4 inches wide, 23.7 deep and 47.7 high. It weighs 187 lb.
Black covers almost everything. The lid is porcelain-coated steel and the side shelves are textured painted steel. Four knobs run across a wide fascia. Two doors open onto an enclosed cabinet with a shelf inside.
The first gas cook is quiet and undramatic. Fat never meets an open flame here. It hits an emitter plate mounted well above the flame. Nothing spits and nothing flares.
Then the grates come out and the griddle plate drops in. Bacon and pancakes behave the way they do on any flat top. Fat pools instead of falling through. Going back to grates is the same job in reverse, and it takes both hands.
Key Features of the Char-Broil Pro Series 4-Burner
What separates this from a plain four-burner is what comes with it. The firebox itself is ordinary enough. The interesting part is how many ways Char-Broil expects you to use it. Most of this list is about what does not need buying later.
- Three cooking modes, no shopping list: The griddle insert and the charcoal trays both come with the grill. Char-Broil calls it 3-in-1 and means it literally. No mode has to be unlocked with a second purchase.
- Somewhere to put the griddle: A griddle storage weldment is built into the cart. It carries its own part number and costs $9.99 to replace. Nobody draws a bracket like that unless the plate is expected to come off often.
- Charcoal lit by the gas burners: You load the trays, run the burners until the coals catch, then shut the gas off. When the cook ends the trays lift out and the ash goes in the bin. No chimney and no lighter fluid.
- Side Burner: A separate burner sits on the left shelf with its own knob and grate. Sauces and sides can cook without anyone leaving the grill. It is one of several things the three-burner Pro Series does without.
- Cast-iron grates: The grates are semi-gloss coated cast iron. Cast iron holds heat through a cold load of food better than thin bar steel. The coating is what stops them rusting.
- Stainless steel: The stainless parts are the four 443-grade main burners and the heat tents above them. Everything else is painted or porcelain-coated steel. Stainless where the fire is, paint where it is not.
- Electric Igniter: Ignition is electronic and runs on a battery, which Char-Broil includes. Push and turn is the whole starting sequence. A dead cell costs you the easy start, not the grill.
- Enclosed cabinet and warming rack: Doors close over the tank and a storage shelf. Above the grates, a second rack adds 202.3 sq in. That is what takes total cooking area to 802.9 sq in.
Char-Broil rates the four main burners at 32,000 BTU and never splits that figure per burner. The primary grate covers 535 sq in. Char-Broil claims room for 25 burgers or 12 steaks at once. Those numbers place this grill in the family-cookout class.
What the specification sheet will not tell you is how hot it actually runs. The temperature range field on Char-Broil’s own page is answered “No”. Nothing in the literature puts a ceiling or a floor on it. On a grill sold on heat behavior, that omission is odd.
The Amplifire system is why the gas mode behaves this way. An emitter plate sits above the burners, directly in the flame path. That plate absorbs the burners’ infrared output and re-radiates it toward the grate. Drips never reach a live flame, so flare-ups stop being part of the job.
Charcoal is the mode that changes the grill’s character rather than its settings. Coals sit in trays above those same burners and make smoke that gas cannot. You cook over real fire without owning a second cooker. That is a different heat source, not a different knob position.
Build, handling and durability
Start with the number nobody markets: 187 lb. Nothing about the assembled machine feels thin. The cabinet took most of that mass. Doors, side panels and an interior shelf all add steel an open cart leaves out.
Material choice follows the usual logic at this price. The alloy budget went entirely to the flame path, and nowhere else. Everything a drip or a hand touches is coated steel, which ages first. Porcelain chips and paint fades, and neither stops the grill cooking.
Its parking spot deserves a decision before the order goes in. Half its wheels lock and swivel, the other half are fixed. That is fine on flat slabs and an argument on gravel. At 61.4 inches wide it wants a wall rather than a corner.
Running costs, upkeep and value
Char-Broil lists this grill at $779.00, checked on 2026-08-27. The same page showed it Out of Stock at that price. The three-burner model in the same line lists at $599.00 and was also unavailable. The gap between them buys considerably more than a fourth burner.
The three-burner has no side burner, and its charcoal trays are a separate purchase. It runs 25,500 BTU over 412 sq in of primary grate, against 535 here. Total area goes 572 sq in against 802.9. Burner count is the least interesting difference between the two.
Upkeep is where Char-Broil quietly does well. A grease tray catches drips and the ash pan lifts out. Charcoal cleanup never means scooping. Then there is the parts list, which puts a price on almost everything.
Char-Broil publishes what each piece costs, so you can price a repair before it happens. Burners are listed at $10.99, grates at $34.99. The warming rack runs $16.99 and the regulator assembly $40.99. Even a door magnet is priced, at $2.99.
Possible Char-Broil Pro Series 4-Burner Complaints
- The emitter is the soft spot in an otherwise strong parts story: Ten years of burner coverage sits beside a 3-year term on the emitter. Both emitter plates showed Out of Stock, with no price, on 2026-08-27. That is the component the whole cooking system is named after. A spare would be worth having if they return.
- Char-Broil states its own warranty three different ways: Its specification table promises ten years of burner coverage and one year on everything else. The description further down the page offers a 3-year limited warranty. The cart panel simply reads “1 Year Warranty”. Hold on to the receipt, since nobody can say which line governs a claim.
