A pizza oven is not an essential item, but it sure is fun to use.
It can also do something your home oven cannot: Reach the blistering-hot temperatures required to bake up the perfect pie.
If you’re really into making the best possible pizza at home, the Ooni Koda 16 Gas Powered Pizza Oven is a great portable pizza oven that can help you reach that goal.
After baking 70 pizzas in four outdoor pizza ovens and one indoor countertop oven, we like the Ooni Koda 16 best because it has the biggest baking surface of all the models we tested, as well as superior heat distribution.
Our pick
This conveniently portable outdoor pizza oven lights up with the turn of a dial and can bake an obscene amount of pizzas on one tank of gas.
The Ooni Koda 16 is the most convenient and user-friendly portable outdoor pizza oven we tested, and it also bakes up a stellar pie. This 16-inch, propane-fueled oven has the largest baking surface of all the ovens we tested, which allowed us more maneuverability for launching, rotating, and moving the pizza as it baked. And the fact that it uses propane (as opposed to wood pellets, charcoal, or hardwood) means you have a continuous flame as long as there’s fuel in the tank. During our tests this past winter, we got the Koda 16 up to 890 degrees Fahrenheit, more than enough heat to bake up a crispy, bubbling pie. At $600 (at this writing), the Koda 16 is an expensive, specialized cooking appliance—you could get a great gas grill that meets more general outdoor-cooking needs for about the same price. But for anyone focused on making great pizza, the Koda 16 works better than a standard grill, and its versatility and ease of use makes it a great value compared with its competitors. If you want to save some money and don’t mind sacrificing oven capacity (but still prefer a propane oven), we think the smaller Ooni Koda 12 Gas Powered Pizza Oven, which typically costs about $200 less than the Koda 16, could serve you well—but we haven’t tested that model.
Budget pick
Small but mighty (and blazing hot), this wood-pellet pizza oven bakes perfect pizzas with a hint of smokiness.
If you want to pay a little less, or if you like being more hands-on with your fuel and want just a touch of smoky flavor (and don’t mind dealing with a few quirks), the wood-pellet-fired Ooni Fyra 12 is a good choice. The Fyra gets just as hot and bakes up the same quality pizzas as the Koda 16, but it’s about $250 cheaper—and smaller, lighter, and smokier. Instead of propane, the Fyra uses wood pellets (the same ones that fuel pellet grills). One hopperful of pellets equals roughly 15 minutes of cooking time, so if you’re baking a lot of pizzas, you’ll have to feed that hopper as you go. Compared with the Koda 16, the Fyra’s smaller stone and oven opening feels a little more cramped for maneuvering your pizza while it cooks. And, as mentioned above, it has its quirks: The hopper can be prone to jams, and it’s normal for flames to shoot out the back of the firebox when you remove the door to launch or rotate the pizza. All that said, it was much easier to get (and keep) a fire going in the Fyra than in the Ooni Karu 12 Multi-Fuel Pizza Oven (which runs on hardwood or lump charcoal), making the Fyra a solid wood-fired pizza oven for the price.
Also great
This oven fully preheats in 15 minutes and can cook a pizza in just over 90 seconds. It’s the Ferrari of countertop ovens: sleek, expensive, and fast.
The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo is designed and built for one thing: baking pizza. And it does that very well, reaching temperatures of up to 750 °F—way hotter than a home oven. Unlike our portable oven picks, which are meant for the backyard, the Breville Pizzaiolo is an indoor countertop appliance that’s loaded with preset cooking functions. It also has precise temperature control, a timer, and included accessories (a metal peel and a deep-dish pizza pan with a detachable handle). At nearly twice the price of the Ooni Koda 16, the Breville Pizzaiolo is a costly specific-use appliance. But if you’re really into making awesome pizza at home and don’t want an outdoor oven, this is a great option.
