Grilling in the dark is mostly guesswork. You lift the hood, everything under it is a silhouette, and you end up carrying the plate inside to the kitchen light to find out whether the chops are done or ruined. The back porch light is behind you, so you are cooking in your own shadow, and holding a phone torch in one hand while you turn sausages with the other is not a system.

A BBQ light fixes it by putting a small amount of light in exactly the right place. This is a pair of magnetic LED grill lights: a metal body with a flexible gooseneck and a magnet in the base, so each barbecue lamp sticks to the grill and points wherever you bend it. Two lights, no cables, no hands. Work the hood and the plate at the same time and actually see what you are doing.

Why It Stands Out

• Two lights, not one — a single barbecue light lights one half of the plate and throws a hard shadow across the other half, whereas a pair set on opposite corners fills in that shadow, and it also means one can stay on the barbecue while the other goes to the prep bench, the side shelf or the drinks table
• A magnet in the base, so your hands stay free — this is the whole point of a magnetic BBQ light over a torch: you press the base against the steel, it holds, and from then on you have two hands for tongs and a plate, which is the difference between seeing the food and juggling
• 360 degree gooseneck that actually holds its shape — the flexible neck bends and stays where you put it, so you can aim a gooseneck grill light down onto the grill bars, sideways along the plate, or up under the hood, and nudge it mid-cook with one finger without moving the base
• 9 LEDs in a head the size of a thumbnail — a small adjustable grill light beam pointed close to the cooking surface reads better than a big light mounted far away, because a focused grill spotlight lights the food from 20 cm rather than trying to flood the whole yard
• A magnetic base light you can move in a second — unlike a BBQ handle light that clamps to one particular rail, or a fixed magnetic outdoor light screwed to a wall, this lifts off and goes on the next surface, which is what makes it useful on a barbecue, a trolley and a toolbox in the same evening
• Aluminium alloy body rather than moulded plastic — a metal housing around the battery compartment and the neck is what stops a cheap grill lamp cracking the first time it falls off the hood onto the pavers, and it wipes clean of the grease and smoke that coat everything near a barbecue
• Completely cordless — 3 AAA batteries in each light, so a cordless grill light goes anywhere without an extension lead snaking across the patio, which matters because the barbecue is rarely near a power point and a cable near a hot hood is a bad idea anyway
• It is not only a BBQ light — the same magnetic base and flexible neck make it a genuine magnetic work light for a car bonnet, a fuse box, under the sink, in the caravan, or anywhere in the shed, so it earns its keep the other fifty weeks of the year as a portable LED light
• Two in the box makes it a reasonable gift — a pair of magnetic LED lights is one of the easier BBQ accessories to buy for someone else, because unlike BBQ tools it does not need to match their barbecue or their taste, which is why a BBQ light ends up on so many Father's Day and Christmas lists among the grill accessories that actually get used

Where to Use

• On the trolley, the side shelf or a side table — the main job, and the reason people search for a grill light in the first place: a magnetic grill light set beside the barbecue and aimed across at the plate turns a black rectangle into something you can read at a glance
• Winter grilling, which is when it really matters — from May through August it is dark by half past five in most of the country, so every mid-week barbecue is a night barbecue, and that is the stretch where a battery grill light stops being a nice idea and starts being the thing that gets dinner cooked
• As a grill work light while you clean up — scraping the plate down afterwards is the part everyone does badly in the dark, and a BBQ work light aimed across the grill bars shows you what you have actually missed rather than what you hope you have
• Summer evenings after the light goes — even with daylight saving the barbecue often runs past nine, and the hood shadows the plate long before the sky is fully dark, so an outdoor cooking light earns its place in January too
• In the outdoor kitchen or under the pergola — an outdoor kitchen light mounted overhead lights the bench but not under the hood, so a small magnetic light on the barbecue itself fills the one gap a fixed fitting cannot reach
• Camping and the caravan — a portable LED light with a magnet sticks to the van, the awning pole bracket, the camp oven lid or the car, which makes it far more useful at a campsite than a torch you have to put down somewhere
• In the shed, the garage and under the car — as a magnetic work light on a bonnet, a wheel arch, a workbench or a toolbox lid, and this is where most people end up using the second one
• Around the house for the jobs with no light — behind the fridge, in the meter box, under the sink, inside the roof space, anywhere an outdoor task light on a bendy neck beats holding a phone in your teeth
• In the boot for when the power goes out — two small battery lights that stick to the fridge door are worth having somewhere findable, since a storm outage in an Australian summer is a matter of when rather than if

How It Works

1. The magnet grips the steel — a magnet set into the 3.8 cm base pulls the light against any magnetic steel surface, which on a barbecue usually means the hood, the trolley, the shelf brackets or the side table.
2. The gooseneck takes the aim — an 11 cm flexible metal neck between the base and the head bends by hand and holds that bend, so the light points where you set it and stays there while you cook.
3. The LED head does the work — 9 small LEDs behind a lens throw a focused pool of light rather than a wide glow, which is why it works close to the food and not as area lighting.
4. Batteries in the handle — 3 AAA cells sit in the body, and a button on the handle switches the light on and off, so there is nothing to plug in and nothing to charge.

How to Use

1. Check your barbecue is actually magnetic first — take a fridge magnet out to it and try the hood before you order. Powder-coated and enamelled steel hoods hold a magnet fine, but a lot of premium Australian barbecues use 304 stainless steel, which is not magnetic at all. If yours is one of those, the magnet will not stick to the hood.
2. Load 3 AAA batteries into each light — six in total for the pair, and they are not included, so have them on hand before the first cook.
3. Pick a cool spot for the base — the outside of the hood, the trolley, the side shelf or a nearby metal surface. Not the cooking surround, not the plate surround, not anywhere that gets genuinely hot.
4. Press the base on firmly and give it a tug — a quick pull tells you whether it is going to stay through a cook. Wipe grease or dust off the steel first, because a film under the magnet halves the grip.
5. Bend the neck and aim short — point the head down at the cooking surface from close range rather than trying to light the whole barbecue from one spot. Close and focused beats far and wide with a light this size.
6. Set the second one opposite — put it on the other corner or the other end, aimed back across, so between the two there is no shadow where you are actually working.
7. Take them off when you are finished — bring them inside rather than leaving them on the barbecue overnight.
Tip: keep both lights off the hood itself while the barbecue is closed and running hot. The hood on a gas barbecue gets hot enough to cook the batteries and soften the plastic around the switch. Put them on the trolley or the side shelf instead, aim upward and across, and they last years rather than a season.

Care and Maintenance

• Wipe the body down after a greasy cook — smoke and fat build a sticky film on anything near a barbecue, and left on the aluminium it collects dust and turns into a coating you have to scrub, so a damp cloth while the body is still warm takes thirty seconds and saves the job later
• Keep the magnet face clean — the grip depends on flat metal meeting flat metal, so grease, grit or a crust of dried marinade on the base is what makes a light that used to hold suddenly slide down the hood mid-cook
• Bring them inside, do not store them on the barbecue — this is not a weatherproof fitting and it is not sealed, so a light left out through a wet week will get moisture into the battery compartment and corrode the contacts
• Take the batteries out for long storage — if the lights are going in a drawer until next season, pull the AAAs, because a leaking cell in a sealed compartment ruins the light and there is no repairing the corrosion once it has spread across the terminals
• Do not bend the neck back and forth more than you need to — a gooseneck is made of a coiled metal spine and it has a finite number of hard bends in it, so set the aim once and adjust it gently rather than reshaping it every cook
• Never let it touch a hot surface — this is not a heat resistant light in any real sense, and contact with a hot hood, a burner or a flame will melt the lens and warp the housing within seconds, so treat it as a portable grill light that sits near the heat rather than on it
• Replace both sets of batteries together — when one light starts going dim the other is usually not far behind, and matched batteries in both keeps the two beams the same brightness, which is the point of running a pair

Specifications

What's Included

• 2 × Magnetic LED BBQ lights
• Batteries are not included — you need 6 × AAA in total

Read this part before you buy. Two things decide whether this works for you. The first is your barbecue: the magnet needs magnetic steel, and 304 stainless steel hoods, which a lot of the better Australian barbecues use, are not magnetic. Test yours with a fridge magnet. If it does not hold, the light still works on the trolley, the side table or anything else steel nearby, but it will not sit on the hood. The second is brightness. At 75 lumens each, these are task lights, not floodlights. Aimed at the plate from close range they show you the food clearly, which is all you need.