Portable Outdoor Pizza Ovens

Compact and reliable, this gas-fired oven is our recommendation for most home cooks who want to cook excellent pizzas outdoors quickly and easily. A gas flame located at the rear of the oven heated up the baking stone relatively evenly while also heating the inside of the oven. An angled heat deflector on the roof of the oven helped direct heat to the tops of the pizzas as they baked. It was easy to ignite the flame and adjust the heat using a dial located at the rear of the oven.

This spacious gas-fired oven is our pick for people who want the convenience of propane and the ability to make big, 16-inch pizzas. It has a powerful L-shaped burner located along the left and rear of the oven, which heats both the stone and the air in the oven effectively. We consistently produced pizzas that were perfectly cooked on top and had beautiful char and spotting on their undersides. Because the back left corner gets hotter than the rest of the oven, it’s important to rotate pizzas so that they cook evenly. The oven is impressively sleek, and its legs fold so that it’s fairly compact in storage or transit, but it’s bulkier and about twice as heavy as the Ooni Koda 12.

This fairly compact oven fits 12-inch pizzas and is a good choice for people who like cooking with wood, charcoal, or gas and want to move their pizza oven with relative ease. We loved that the tall chimney—which is essential for wood and charcoal cooking—can be removed and replaced with a small cap while using propane and when transporting or storing the oven. The gas flame, which is located at the rear of the oven and arcs over the stone, is powerful and easy to ignite. Pizzas had nicely melted and bubbly cheese on top while the sides and bottom of the crusts had good char and spotting. Wood must be cut down to size, and maintaining the heat with both wood and charcoal is messy and requires some vigilance. But if you enjoy both the challenges and potential rewards of using those fuels, including the ability to slow-roast foods, this model is fun and easier to use than others we’ve tested.

If you want the versatility of making pizzas using wood, charcoal, or gas, this large multifuel model is our favorite option. Just know that those fuels are inherently more difficult and messier to use than gas and do not add flavor to quick-cooking foods such as pizza. You need to cut your wood to size, but the tray-style chamber for burning wood and charcoal is the largest of the ovens we tested and is easy to access. The cooking surface, which measures 18 inches wide by 18 inches long, is about 5 inches wider than the cooking surfaces of other models we tested. A chimney adds bulk but helpfully directs smoke out of the oven without getting in the user’s eyes. This oven can also be used to slow-roast meats and can run on wood pellets with the purchase of an additional attachment.

We had good results using this oven with propane: An exposed flame at the rear of the oven heated the stone quickly and relatively evenly and also ensured that the tops of the pizzas cooked through quickly. It was less user-friendly when heated with wood. The cylindrical chamber that holds the wood was small, and the wood pieces had to be small enough to clear a 90-degree turn down a narrow chute that leads into the chamber. Even when we were able to fill the chamber with wood that fit, we struggled to build a lasting fire and we had to monitor it constantly. We had to detach the chamber completely to empty the ashes and embers, which we couldn’t do until it had completely cooled.

The gas burner is located below the stone, so the stone got hotter than a home oven and heated very evenly, but the air in the oven didn’t get as hot as we would have liked. Hence, the pizzas took longer to cook through than in other models and had fairly crisp crusts. The pizzas were good, but we wanted an oven that would allow us to make airier, more tender pizzas.

Although this oven is similar in size and shape to our favorite propane-powered oven, it performed differently. The oven was much hotter in the back than in the front, so the section of the pizza nearest the flame scorched while the section farthest from the flame remained soft and pale. Even when we rotated the pizzas frequently, it was nearly impossible to get an evenly cooked pizza. It was hard to build and maintain a robust flame using wood and charcoal, though we did like that the tray used to hold the wood and charcoal was easy to access. It lacked a chimney, so any smoke in the oven blew straight out of the mouth of the oven and into our eyes, which was especially noticeable when we used wood and charcoal to heat it.

This propane-powered oven was big and bulky, with a burner located below its wide, 20-inch baking stone. The stone got hot and heated evenly, but the burner didn’t sufficiently heat the air at the top of the oven, meaning that the tops of the pizzas took a long time to cook and the crusts turned out thick and crunchy. Those pizzas tasted great, but we preferred more versatile models that weren’t limited to making a certain style of pizza.