I love my PG500... but must admit , I dream of a Memphis sometimes. But with my pocket book, a Memphis realistically isn't in the cards.
Grilling in the PG500 is great, probably as good or better than anything else I've grilled on. Only issue at all , is that the space is fairly limited, and it's in a slightly awkward position to work in ( far left ). I can pretty easily grill 6 burgers ( which is about as many as I personally ever really need to cook ). You could probably squeeze 8 in the area, but flipping would become quite challenging. Could easily grill 2 relatively large steaks at once, possibly three medium sized ones, but again, if you go for three, it's going to get a little tricky flipping them. For me, this size grilling area is enough for 99% of my own grilling needs... for the rest of the time, I'll find some other way, like a small gas grill, or whatever.
Funny thing is, as great as grilling is on the PG500, I mostly love it for everything else it can do... Pizza on the upper shelf at 650F or more... smoking at 170F. I just love the grill...
It does probably have more ash flying around then many other pellet grills. It's just the nature of how the direct grilling area and how the heat flow in this grill works, there's not much there to keep the ashes down. This isn't a problem for me, if I was worried about ash, I just wouldn't grill on a wood fired device.