Ooni Koda 16 Propane Gas Pizza Oven – 16" Gas Powered Outdoor Oven with 28 mBar Regulator and Gas Hose, Gas Powered Portable Pizza Oven - Foundry Black

Why it's worth it

The Koda 16 runs on propane only, hits 950°F in about 20 minutes, and cooks a 16-inch pie in 60 seconds. There's no fuel to load and nothing to relight. You unfold the legs, drop in the stone, connect a tank, and hit the igniter.

If you want pizza to be a weeknight thing rather than a project, buy this one. There's no ash, no kindling, no watching a fire die halfway through your third pie. You turn a dial. Owners who make pizza every weekend for months tend to be Koda owners — the low friction is why the oven stays on the patio instead of getting covered up.

The L-shaped burner is the reason results here are more consistent than on wood. It wraps heat along the back and one side instead of blasting from a single point, so the far edge of a 16-inch pie doesn't lag behind the near edge. You still turn the pizza, but you're correcting less. That's a meaningful difference when you're cooking eight pies for a party and the fifth one needs to be as good as the first.

From our review of 6 pizza ovens, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +If you want pizza to be a weeknight thing rather than a project, buy this one
• +The L-shaped burner is the reason results here are more consistent than on wood
• +The powder-coated carbon steel shell holds heat well, and the whole thing is genuinely simple
• +It roasts too. Drop in a cast iron pan and you can sear steak, blister peppers, or finish a piece of fish in a couple of minutes

What to know

• –No wood, no smoke, no wood flavor — and no upgrade path to it
• –It's open-fronted with no door, so it loses heat between launches and it's more affected by wind and cold than an insulated oven