(1) I don't have any experience with Kamado grills but heard they were good at everything but not great at anything. (2) I also heard they are hard to bring temps down if you overshoot target? Is that an accurate assessment?
Since the charcoals are at bottom, it would be hard to add or stir the charcoals during a cook. (3) How do you deal with this issue?
(1) Everyone has different expectations as to taste. With a kamado, a user that's smoking meat builds a charcoal fire and puts as many wood chunks as they like on top of the burning charcoal. The temperature is controlled by restricting the air flow to the fire. This is the way a lot of smokers work, including the Masterbuilt Gravity series (in fact,
any gravity-feed smoker). I've been told that it's a different smoke flavor from a stick burner (which I also have) that controls the temperature and smoke flavor by controlling the fire size, not
necessarily by controlling the air flow (but sometimes). Evidently my palate isn't sensitive enough to differentiate the two.
Grilling is easy on a kamado, the charcoal is below the grate. You build your fire and you grill away. Reverse searing a steak after smoking is easy. Smoke it at 225°, remove the heat deflectors, install the grates, crank the heat (air flow) and sear.
(2) Yep. That's an accurate assessment. One of the kamado's strengths is that they are generally made of material with high thermal mass, so you can open the lid, spritz and close the lid without losing cooking temperature. But if you overshoot your desired cooking temperature by an appreciable amount you may as well go take a nap because it'll be a while before the temperature drops 75° or so.
(3) I don't ever need to stir lit kamado charcoal, even on a smoke that lasts several hours. You can easily smoke 15 hours on one charcoal load and not need to stir or add charcoal.