I learned from my prior electric smoker experience to definitely visit the owner's forum. That is where you get a true sense of the product. If I had done that before my prior purchase, I would not have made that purchase. Issues such as, "placing a brick in the cabinet to act as a heat sync", "installing a second heating element" and other absurd methods the owners were utilizing just to get the unit to function like it should have out of the box. Those were all red flags but unfortunately, I didn't discover the forum until after my purchase.
So yes, I read through a lot of the forum here and what I read definitely convinced me to go with Smokin-It over the other two brands that were in the running. Believe me, that says a LOT. One of the brands I was considering is manufactured in my home state, and I take a great deal of pride in that fact.