Hi cdp8,
At work we sell multiple brands of pellet grills and I've owned a Smokefire Gen2 for a couple years now and if there is one piece of advice I give to our customers it is to
use foil drip pans or liners as often as possible! That's actually the main reason I prefer the smokefire design to many othes on the market - the use of FLAT flavourizer bars that allow you to use cheap store bought foil pans to catch 90% of the mess that would normally find its way down into the body. Also the smokeboost feature is legit - running the temp way down at 185 for the first 1-3 hours (depending on what you're cooking) really allows for excellent smoke penetration. I can pull off a better smoke ring on my Smokefire than I can on the Summit Charcoal.
The main thing you want to avoid is the buildup of the dusty ash in the bottom of the grill so that grease doesn't drip down into it and more or less make a firestarter in the bottom of the unit. By running the pans you can keep almost all that grease out and I just use a small hand dustpan sweeper to brush the dry ash down into the catcher. Doing it this way I have yet to have to pull out and clean the auger even once and the machine has run like a dream since day one.
We don't sell the Treager units at our store but I have used a few and we get feedback on them all the time. I've had at least 3 customers so far this spring that bought one from Costco but took it home and weren't happy with the amount of smoke flavor it produced. The pellets themselves might actually be the flavor issue for some, but it is odd that its mainly the Treager folks who arent happy with flavor. They ended up returning and swapping over to either the Weber or Broil King unit and have been happy since.
Also steer clear of the Treager pellets for what its worth... better options out there for sure. My favorites are Lumberjack, Weber and Broil King of which I've run many bags of each with great results and no issues.
Last but not least I'm sure you've already read a million posts about not leaving pellets in the hopper. This is absolutely good advice, but dont let it spook you... I find if you are using a quality pellet they can sit in there quite easily for a week plus no problem and I live in raincouver
Anyways, sorry for the novel but thats my thoughts on it! I was/am a die hard charcoal guy who used to look down at pellet grills as "cheating" ... but now I've seen light