Ooni Volt 2 Indoor Pizza Oven, Tested and Reviewed

I’ll never forget the first pizza I ate in Italy: a prosciutto e funghi that arrived at our table on a white plate of the same size. Its puffed, blistered crust stood out from the thin, cracker-crisp pies I knew as a 17-year-old American. And until then, I hadn’t seen anyone drizzle olive oil on pizza or choose a fork and knife over biting in. Florence isn’t even known for pizza, but that eight-ish-table restaurant set a new standard for me. 

Now, as a kitchen editor who knows the ins and outs of indoor and outdoor pizza ovens, I understand the difference that high heat makes. Conventional home ovens max out between 500° to 550°F. While restaurants can turn out a New York pizza at anywhere from 500° to 650°F, to achieve the same cook at home without an industrial-sized oven, you need higher temps, according to Ooni. And to produce Neapolitan pies with leopard browning and airy crusts, an oven needs to reach temperatures of 850° to 950°F. Home pizza ovens are designed to do exactly that. Gas and wood-burning ovens occupy the upper end of the range, but heating an indoor pizza oven to 850°F, or even 800°F, delivers just as impressive results.

I started testing the original Ooni indoor pizza oven, the Volt 12, about a year ago. But when Ooni reached out about testing their new version of the oven, the Volt 2, I was curious if it could be noticeably better. After all, I’ve had only a few issues with the original Volt. Ooni, however, never stops reinventing its ovens — we’ve tested 10 from the brand at our Food & Wine lab — and with each new release comes small improvements. With the Volt 2, that means a more compact design, presets for different styles of pizza, and a real-time temperature display. The improvements to the Volt 2 may be slight, but they’ve helped me make my best pizzas yet. Here’s what I found while testing it.

Dimensions: 10.35 (H) x 17.4 (W) x 21.46 (D) inches | Weight: 38.8 | Pizza Size: Up to 13 inches | Temperature Range: 70° to 850°F

The Volt 2 arrived fully assembled: I just had to place the pizza stone in the oven and plug it in. Indoor pizza ovens take up more counter space than the average countertop appliance — about as much room as a larger air fryer toaster oven — but the Volt 2 looked sleek right out of the box. Side by side on the countertop, the two Volts don’t look much different in size, but according to Ooni, the new model takes up 30% less space, so storing it in a cabinet should be more feasible. It weighs just under 40 pounds, however, so it’s not leaving my counter. One advantage of choosing an indoor pizza oven is that it can also live outdoors near an electrical outlet if you’re short on kitchen space, but you have to be careful to shield it from rain, so there are pros and cons. 

Despite the smaller size, the Volt redesign didn’t skimp on cooking area, as both ovens use the same size pizza stone for up to 13-inch crusts. More similarities include the same maximum temperature, dials to control the temperature, and door handles that stay cool to the touch. The most surprising part of my tests was that the original Volt heated faster, hitting 850°F in 23 minutes, while the Volt 2 took 25 minutes. The outside of the Volt 2, however, doesn’t get quite as hot as the original, measuring 92°F versus 104°F.

The other differences I found favored the Volt 2. Ooni designed the Volt 2’s control panel to be more intuitive and added a real-time display of the temperature. The original showed the temperature on a dial in 50°F increments, which is actually specific enough for a pizza oven, as cooking in a general range is usually good enough. I just like seeing the exact temperature to gauge cooking time, such as when the oven door opens and the temperature drops. Also helpful for monitoring food is the Volt 2’s noticeably larger window: Cooking on high heat, when the air pockets bubble up inside the crust and leopard spots develop on the crust and cheese, the pizza can go from browning to burning in seconds. The window has helped me prevent that, giving me an idea of exactly when to grab the pizza peel and remove the pie.

In the Volt 2, Ooni also addressed the main con I found with the Volt 12, adding a removable, dishwasher-safe filter to dissipate steam and smoke. Whereas the original would flood my kitchen with smoke whenever a clump of flour or cheese spilled onto the pizza stone, the Volt 2 releases noticeably less fumes, though it’s still not smoke-free — think of it like a smokeless grill. I will say that using an indoor pizza oven for the first time takes a bit of trial and error, and I started using the Volt 2 knowing which mistakes to avoid. For example, I now know to use only as much flour on the pizza paddle as the dough needs to slide off, and not to put cheese or sauce too close to the edge of the crust because it can spill over onto the stone when you’re shimmying the pizza into the oven.

If you’ve ever thought about investing in a pizza oven, I can’t recommend the new and improved Volt 2 enough. It lets you create restaurant-level pizza from the comfort of your kitchen, and with this new design, Ooni streamlined the process as well as the footprint. 

At the time of publishing, the price was $699.

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