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You light the fire, settle into your chair with something warm in your hands, and then the wind turns. The smoke follows you around the circle like it has a personal grudge, and suddenly the whole evening is a game of musical chairs with the fire pit as the DJ.
Vevor’s smokeless fire pit exists to end that game. It is a steel cylinder, about 17 by 27 inches, that burns wood with a double wall and a second round of air so most of the smoke gets burned off before it reaches your face. Here is the verdict up front: at $219.90, it cuts the smoke a lot without killing the fire, and it is the best kind of backyard upgrade — the kind you notice every single time you use it. It is not smoke-free, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But smoke-less, once it gets going, is real, and it changes the evening.
Forty-four reviews cover this exact size, and across the whole fire-pit range, 133 reviews average 4.56 out of 5. Owners praise the heat and the easy cleanup, and they are honest about the smoke: less, not none, and it takes a little while to get there.
What you are actually buying
The pit is a black steel cylinder with a stainless-steel inner liner, and the whole point of that double wall is the second burn. Air comes in low, feeds the fire from below, and then rises between the walls, heats up, and jets out through vents near the top to burn off the smoke before it escapes. It is a clever piece of physics hiding inside a very plain-looking drum, and it works best once the fire is hot and established.
At 36.2 pounds, it is heavy enough to sit steady on a patio and light enough for one person to carry to the back of the yard or load into a truck for a camping trip. It comes with three foot pads that lift the base off the ground and a fire poker for nudging logs around. The ash tray pulls out from the side, which is the feature you will thank every time you clean up: no tipping the whole pit over, no shoveling cold ash out of a deep drum.
| Vevor smokeless fire pit, about 17 × 27 | |
|---|---|
| Size | About 17 × 27 in (height × diameter) |
| Weight | 36.2 lbs |
| Inner liner | SUS430 stainless steel, heat resistant up to 1,832°F |
| Outer wall | Carbon steel, heat resistant up to 1,472°F |
| Ash removal | Side pull-out ash tray |
| Included | 3 foot pads, 1 fire poker |
The finish is a high-temperature black powder coating, and the outer wall is built to take the heat without peeling or rusting through a season. The deep furnace holds a real fire — this is not a tabletop novelty — and a gauge on the pit shows the safe distance from the ground, which is the kind of small, practical detail that tells you the designers were thinking about actual backyards, not just product photos.
The smoke question, answered honestly
Let us be plain about the word in the name. “Smokeless” is a promise no wood fire can fully keep, and the owners of this pit say so themselves: it is smoke-less, not smoke-free. When you first light it, you will get smoke. Cold wood, a cold steel drum, and a fire that has not found its rhythm yet will smoke like any other fire. Give it time, let the walls heat up and the second burn kick in, and the smoke drops off sharply. The fire burns cleaner, the flames run hotter, and you can sit downwind without moving your chair every ten minutes.
That warm-up matters for how you plan the evening. Light the pit fifteen or twenty minutes before everyone comes outside, the way you would preheat an oven, and by the time the chairs fill up, the fire is doing its best work. Light it the moment your guests arrive and the first round of conversation will be everyone waving smoke out of their faces. It just takes its time getting to the good part.
What you get in return is real. The double wall and the vented top mean the fire burns hotter and more completely than an open bowl, which is why owners keep coming back to the heat. A fire that burns clean is a fire that throws warmth instead of smoke, and on a cold November evening, that is the whole point of being outside.
Living with it
Once it is going, this is a low-fuss fire. The deep furnace takes full logs without constant tending, and the secondary burn means you are feeding the fire less often than you would an open pit. The poker earns its keep here — a quick nudge to settle the logs, and the fire finds its shape again. When the evening winds down, let the fire burn itself out naturally. Dousing it with water is a fast way to invite rust, and a steel pit that rusts is a steel pit you replace sooner than you should.
Cleanup is where the pull-out ash tray pays for itself. Wait until everything is cold, slide the tray out, and tip the ash into a metal bucket. There is no awkward lift-and-pour, no ash drifting across the patio. Owners call the cleaning easy, and for a wood-burning fire pit, that is high praise — most of them are a chore to empty.
One honest note, and it matters: one recent owner opened the box to find the pit badly dented on arrival. Steel dents in shipping, and a fire pit is a big steel drum in a cardboard box. Check yours when it arrives, before the first fire, and if it shows up damaged, start the return right away rather than lighting it and living with the dent. It is a shipping risk, not a design flaw, but it is a real one.
What to burn in it
The pit burns wood, and the wood you choose decides how much smoke you get. Dry, seasoned hardwood is the right fuel: it catches fast, burns hot, and gives the second burn something clean to work with. Green or damp wood fights the whole design — it smoulders, it smokes, and it never gets hot enough for the vents to do their job. If your fire is smoking more than it should, the wood is the first thing to check, before you blame the pit.
Start with small kindling and let the fire build before you add full logs. A hot base is what wakes up the double wall, and a fire that starts strong stays clean. Once it is established, the deep furnace holds a real fire without constant tending — add a log when the flames drop, nudge it with the poker, and let the secondary burn do the quiet work of keeping the smoke down.
Placement matters too. Set the pit on a flat, non-flammable surface, with the foot pads underneath and clear space around it — the gauge on the pit shows the safe distance from the ground, and it is worth a glance the first time you set it up. At 36.2 pounds it is portable enough to carry to the far corner of the yard or load into a truck for a camping trip, and it comes apart for storage when the season ends. A fire pit you can move is a fire pit that gets used in more places than the patio.
For the rest of the fire-pit picture, our smokeless fire pit roundup puts this one in context with the rest of the category, our fire pit table vs fire bowl vs smokeless comparison sorts out which shape fits which yard, and if you are wondering what to burn, our pine needles in a fire pit guide has the answer (short version: not a great idea).
Who should buy it, and who should not
Buy this smokeless fire pit if you love a backyard fire but hate chasing the smoke around the circle, if you want real heat on a cold evening without tending the fire every ten minutes, and if you have a patio or a flat patch of yard where a 27-inch drum fits comfortably. At $219.90, with a stainless liner, a pull-out ash tray, and a second burn that genuinely cuts the smoke, it is a fair price for a fire pit you will use all fall and winter.
Do not buy it if you want zero smoke, period — no wood fire delivers that, and you would be happier with a propane table. Do not buy it if you need something tiny for a balcony or a tabletop; this is a full-size pit that wants real space and real logs.
For everyone else, the verdict is simple: light it early, let it get hot, and enjoy the rare backyard fire where the smoke stays out of your eyes and the heat stays in the circle. That is what a smokeless pit is for, and this one does the job.
VEVOR Smokeless Fire Pit, About 17 × 27
A double-wall steel pit that burns hotter and cleaner, with a pull-out ash tray and real heat for cold evenings — smoke-less, not smoke-free, and honest about it.
