I think you seriously underestimate the value of a propane grill

No. There’s not much that you can do on one that you can’t theoretically do on your stove or in your oven

But if you’re doing something that’s likely to smoke up, you can do that without filling your house with smoke, and sometimes a grill is exactly what’s needed for ripping hot direct heat, not everyones stove or oven can replicate those conditions well.

There’s less cleanup, usually you’re cooking things right on the grill, no pots and pans to deal with later, just utensils, plates, and the grill itself which often doesn’t need much more than a quick scrub or sometimes you can even get away with just burning it off.

Using your stove or oven can sometimes noticeably heat up your house, and in the summer that’s something most people are trying to avoid.

If you’re having an outdoor event, you can stay outside where the party is instead of hanging around away from everyone in the kitchen. You’re opening the door less to bring out food as it’s ready so you’re keeping the cool air inside and the bugs outside.

And frankly, not everything really benefits much from charcoal. If you just want to grill up some hot dogs you’re not gonna notice a ton of difference between charcoal and propane.

And all of that does of course apply to charcoal as well, but what gas brings to the table is convenience. Turn a couple knobs, press a button, and your grill is ready to go in a couple minutes. No waiting for the charcoal to get going, no needing to add more later on if you’re doing a long cook (and if you do manage to kill your propane tank, if you’ve got a spare, it takes all of 30 seconds to swap it out for a fresh one) and once you’re done cooking, just turn the knobs the other way and the fire is out and the grill will cool off pretty quickly. No need to worry about your still burning coals that might keep going for another couple hours because you misjudged how much you needed. And it’s less fiddly, want it hotter? Just turn up the gas. Cooler? Turn it down. You get basically instant feedback about how hot your grill is, unlike with charcoal where you may need to spend some time fucking around with the vents to get the right airflow.

If I can, and I have time, I prefer charcoal, but I will always have at least a small propane grill around as well, because it’s pretty hard to beat that convenience when you just want to quickly grill up a couple things for a weeknight dinner and be done with it.

I’ve had charcoal before and never really tasted the difference, though that probably says more about my grilling skills than anything lol. And some things (like burgers) make a lot of smoke and just need to be cooked outside, preferably over an open flame. Either way I never really found charcoal to be worth the setup/teardown hassle.

Smoking I feel like it would be one of those things that I’d be stoked about having but never really do that often, so I don’t want to buy something just for that capability.