Meat Injector, 304 Stainless Steel Marinade Syringe Injector Kit for Cooking BBQ Grill, with 2-oz Marinade Flavor Barrel, 3 Professional Needles, 3 Cleaning Brushes and 5 Silicone O-rings

This marinade injector is about what one might expect for a $23 meat injector. This is not going to be something you will cherish for years to come, but it will probably get the job done, though it might leave behind some extra silicone grease and chrome/zinc chunks in your meal.Firstly, most of it is not stainless steel. The only parts that are actually stainless are the main barrel, the shaft for the plunger and the injectors. The handles on the back, the front (where the injectors thread in), and the piston inside are all chrome plated zinc castings. In some places (notably on the threads) some of the chrome had already chipped off, which isn't great considering that you would be using this to inject into your food. Also, the inside of it was loaded with silicone grease (presumable to help it seal) and when I went to wipe this out I also wiped out a bunch of nasty metal dust from manufacturing, again not great in a "food grade" device.The interior of the stainless steel barrel had nice surface finish, but this was completely negated by the fact that it had a welded seam! (see picture) The weld was cleaned up nicely, but it was not smoothed hardly at all. When pushing the plunger in and out it is very uneven and you can feel all of the unevenness of the weld and the plunger doesn't move smoothly. Furthermore, this is going to very quickly degrade the O-rings and the unit will not longer work properly, luckily they give you extras...The next issue I found was that the interior part of the bottom piece was extremely rough and had massive burs of chrome and zinc sticking off, ready to break off and be injected into your food! So then I tried to disassemble the bottom end and found it was glued it with what appears to be super glue (since acetone dissolved it quickly). In fact, all of the parts appear to be super glued together, not necessarily a problem, though I am not sure that cyanoacrylate glue is technically "food safe". So , before you use it, not only should you super clean it (to get rid of the grease and metal dust), but you should also remove those burrs from the inside. Though of course, removing those burrs will break off the chrome plating, and expose the underlying zinc to then start corroding...The needles themselves are ok. Nothing particularly beautiful, but nothing really wrong with them. Externally, it is shiny, had some scratches on the barrel, and the fit and finish were fairly mediocre. The chrome plating was clearly used to try and cover some of the ugliness, because you can see the surface is pretty poor on the cast zinc parts.Overall, it is cheap, that's about all it has going for it. I wouldn't normally be bothered with some burs or metal dust and grease on something this cheap, but given that this is meant to be filled with food, I find that unacceptable. There is no way this is really "FDA approved". If you buy this wash it A LOT before using it, and try to remove those burrs on the inside.

I had a plastic version of this and used it a few times and it broke (different manufacturer as well). I decided to upgrade to a higher quality product and couldn't be happier with my decision. This has all the accessories I'd need and was easy to use, easy to clean and did an amazing job. This has become a staple in my cooking arsenal and has made my meals even better than before. This will be the last injector I'll ever have to buy.

I withhold on durability because I haven't had very long.

Been through other sets which failed miserably. While I have not had it that long, it seems to be the product I’ve been looking for.

Bueno

Excellent construction. Should last me the remainder of my meat smoking days.

On time and great product.

Very good quality and sturdy injector. Accessories included make it a great deal.