One of my friends has an older traeger and I never see any smoke above 250 on that thing, not impressed. My other buddy has a rec-tec and loves it. We cooked some damn good chicken on it. I was about to get the RT-700 then I got a deal on the MAK.
Regarding the Franklin style grill, do you mean an offset? If you do buy one, get a good one, it's worth the investment. I have an Oklahoma Joe and after a lot of frustration and few mods I can kick out some good Q on it but you have to babysit it. I have ran other offsets that work WAY better. As in throw a split on every hour and it will hold 250. Shirley fabrication is producing same damn good cookers at a good price but I think they only build reverse flow.