FWIW, I don’t think it’s a placebo effect. I do think it’s the difference between a KK grill and ceramic kamado grills.
I’ve made this point before, but one often-stated advantage of a kamado grill is that it is more efficient and traps moisture better than a Weber kettle grill. If that’s the case, then it should be the case that the more efficient that a kamado grill is at trapping moisture, the better the results. I know that the very first cooks I was doing with Smaug were better than the food from a BGE demonstration run by one of their reps. (The BGE food was very good, to be sure.) That’s why I think that the difference that you and Ryan are seeing is real.