Yes, it's a smoker, in its own rights! It has two little side pockets which hold wood chips of your choice. As the roaster heats up those little chips are set to smokin'. I've been using the smoker set at 250* and it has worked flawlessly and pretty amazing, given that I'm used to the stuff that comes out of the big Brinkmann smoker.
It's really perfect for doing small amounts when you don't want to fire up the big smoker, and as long as you have a bag of wood chips around - all you need is the meat, you can decide on the fly to run the smoker. I'm quite pleased with the little bugger.
I have no vested interest in it, I just think it's pretty cool for "quick and dirty" smoking jobs.
It works good. Takes a bit to get it to temp but it doesn't have a problem getting to 240-260 which is about the max temp for me anyhow.
I might look at adding the mailbox modification because I probably only get smoke about half what I could if my pellets where not sitting right above the burner, but I can still get 5-6 hours of smoke.
That roaster gives me some ideas with an old one my mom is through ing out. I'm going to grab it and attach a homemade smokedaddy for some good temperature controlled smoking.