Meat smoked with pellets tastes like chemicals to me...
I would guess this is from two things. Either you tasted meat cooked in a brand new unit and are tasting the manufacturing oily film that should have been burned off, seasoned for 45 minutes, before cooking or the grates in the unit has not been cleaned in a very long time and the grease inside has turned rancid and you are getting a creosote taste.
The pellet smoker if designed properly should give you a very good thin blue smoke and not the puffy white smoke that can create a bitter taste. The smoker is using convection heat and you should get a "almost" perfectly cooked meat. It cooks much better than electric due to the convection heat created with the fans and insures you don't get a temperature outside the range you want to cook that can happen with the other methods. If you compared your product to 100 other weekend cooks using other methods, you should easily be in the top 5.
Fruit pellets tend to be much lighter on smoke flavor compared to chunks and I would suggest blending it with other pellets.
What makes the pellet smoker work so well is a recipe for something to break down in the future. Make sure to buy one with a very good warranty and expect at some point in the future that either a wire connection, fan & auger motors at some point will go down. Moisture, heat, smoke, dust and grease will harm the unit over time. Companies that back their products for extended period in the future are more likely to build with better components.
I purchased a Grilla Silverback pellet smoker and have been very pleased with it design, build and function. In addition, I purchased another half top rack to go along with the one that is supplied which gives you two full racks to cook on and a cover to protect it from the elements.
