Good Neighbor Feature
You may remember that the original BBQ Guru Competitor had a "Good Neighbor Feature" which allowed you to disable the alarm so as not to disturb your neighbors. While the IQ110 did not have an alarm, this feature is implemented on the IQ120 by allowing you to set the alarm volume or disable it altogether in program mode.

Virtual Blower Feature

The IQ110 had no visible indication of when the blower is actually on or off, but the IQ120, with its new display, does indeed have a visible display to tell you that the blower is running. It also tells you the blower's duty cycle, or what percentage of the time that the blower is actually running. The leftmost digit of the display is used for this purpose. Every 20 seconds, the leftmost digit will start rotating once per second, from one rotation up to 20 rotations. Each rotation represents 5% of the duty cycle. So, one rotation indicates the blower is running 5% of the time. Ten rotations indicates it is running 50% of the time, and so on.

In the two photos below, you can see what we mean by the left most digit rotating. Two segments light up in turn going around the edge of the display giving the illusion that the outer segments are rotating around the digit. When the blower is off, none of the segments light up.

 

Power Interruption Feature
Whereas the IQ110 could remember the target cooker temperature when power is lost because the value was set and maintained with a potentiometer, the IQ120 now has lots of parameters and settings that you specify, so it has a non-volatile memory to hold all these settings. When power is lost, the settings are retained in the memory and are available to the unit when power returns.

Both the IQ110 and IQ120 have a secret algorithm for learning your cooker's characteristics during the initial startup of your cooker, so you may wonder if this information is stored across a power loss. It is not. If it were, there would have to be a way to reset the learning so you could move the unit from one cooker to another. Since the learning does occur during startup, it is accomplished quickly and there really is no reason to save the information it learns.

Ramp Mode Feature
The IQ110 didn't have ramp mode, so does the IQ120 have it? Well, sort of....

What is Ramp Mode? It is a clever mode, patented by the BBQ Guru folks, in which the controller will lower the cooker temperature once the meat gets close to being done. As the meat temperature rises closer and closer to the target temperature, the controller continues to lower the cooker temperature. Ultimately, when the meat temperature reaches the target temperature, the cooker will also be at the meat target temperature. As a result, you can hold your meat at your target temperature as long as the cooker has fuel left to burn. And that's why it is called "ramp" mode. A graph of the pit temperature looks like a ramp as it gradually descends to the food temperature.

What the IQ120 does in lieu of ramp mode is wait for the food to reach its target temperature and then it drops the pit temperature setting all at once to the value you have specified (as opposed to reducing it to the food temperature). So, you have a bit more flexibility with this feature in that you tell the unit what temperature to use.

Cold Smoking
The iQue 110 could control your cooker down to 175° which really isn't cold smoking, so cold smoking isn't really possible with that unit. The IQ120 has expanded its control range to 150°F - 400°F so it is certainly more capable of cold smoking now.

Learning Your Cooker
As we stated earlier, the IQ120 will learn the characteristics of your cooker and adjust its control algorithm accordingly. We don't know the details of this process, but we'll quote from the iQue 110 website:

"Don’t try to understand the iQue’s blowing pattern. It is complicated and it will drive you nuts. Drink a beer instead."

Another thing to consider is that the learning process occurs during the time you are bringing your cooker up to temperature. Some folks feel you should get your cooker up to temperature first and then turn the temperature control on in order to avoid overshoot. We haven't found overshoot to be a big problem on any of the controllers we have tested, so it is probably best to let the IQ110 or IQ120 take control from the start to allow it to do it's learning the way it is intended to.

Open Lid Detect Feature
The IQ110 had a method of detecting when the lid is open. There were no details about this, but we presumed that like other controllers, it sensed large temperature swings and avoided using the blower during these times. The IQ120 has an advertised open lid detect feature which can be enabled or disabled in the unit's settings. Again, the algorithm is not explicitly described in the owner's manual, but again we presume that it detects large and/or rapid temperature swings and disables the blower appropriately.

Delay Time Feature
The IQ120 introduces the Delay Time feature whereby you can specify a time period and a temperature. When the time period expires, the IQ120 will change the pit set temperature from its current setting to the temperature that you configure as the new temperature to use when the time expires. This feature is apparently popular with competition teams who might wish to start their cookers up late at night, let them go during the night at a low temperature and then have them heat up to a hotter cooking temperature early in the morning so they are ready to go at the right time.

Fan Speed Feature
The IQ120 introduces another new feature in the ability to set the fan speed. The IQ110 automatically controlled the fan speed. The IQ120 also has an automatic setting, but if you so desire, you can force the unit to use one of five different speeds. If you are using a small efficient cooker, you may wish to set the fan speed to "1", while if you are using a large cooker that needs lots of air feeding the fire, you can set it to "5". We would expect that using your average cooker, you would do best allowing the IQ120 to set the fan speed automatically.