Which Ooni should I buy? How to choose in five minutes

Question 1: do you have outdoor space?

Every Ooni but one has to live outdoors. Gas and wood produce carbon monoxide, so using them inside is not a matter of being careful — it is simply not allowed.

If you have no garden, balcony or roof terrace, the Volt 2 is the only option. It runs on an ordinary socket and may sit in the kitchen. You give up fifty degrees against gas, which works out at ninety seconds per pizza instead of sixty.

Question 2: gas or wood?

This is the question that says most about how happy you will be in the end, and the answer depends not on taste but on how you want to spend an evening.

Gas is switch on, wait fifteen minutes, bake. You can decide at six on a Tuesday that you are having pizza and be at the table by half past. Wood is lighting the fire, feeding it between pizzas, and clearing ash afterwards. That costs close to an extra hour and gives you smoke flavour and a less even, better-looking bake.

If you cannot decide, the Karu range is the way out: it burns wood and, with a separate burner, gas. You pay for the burner on top, but you do not have to make the choice up front.

• Gas, quick and predictable: Koda 12, Koda 2, Koda 16, Koda 2 Pro, Koda 2 Max
• Wood or charcoal, with gas as an option: Karu 12, Karu 2, Karu 2 Pro
• Electric, indoors too: Volt 2

Question 3: twelve inches or sixteen?

Twelve inches is one thirty-centimetre pizza. That is a proper pizza for one person, but it does mean six guests is six rounds of ninety seconds each, plus recovery time in between. In practice you stand at the oven for half an hour while everyone eats in shifts.

Sixteen inches changes that not only because the pizza is bigger, but mainly because the oven has more mass and so sags less between bakes. You get through them faster.

The rule of thumb that works best: if you usually bake for three people or fewer, twelve inches is fine. If you regularly bake for five or more, the premium for sixteen is worth it — and if you skip it, this is the purchase you regret within a year.

The short answers

Work through the three questions and you almost always land on one of these four.

• Smallest budget, just want to try it: Koda 12
• Best balance of price and usability: Koda 2 Pro
• Wood flavour without the top price: Karu 2
• No outdoor space: Volt 2

What you will need either way

Budget for a perforated pizza peel. Without one the pizza will not slide off your hand into the oven, and that is the mistake almost everyone comes unstuck on during their first evening.

If your model has no built-in thermometer — that means the Koda 12, Koda 16 and Karu 12 — an infrared thermometer is the second purchase. You bake on stone temperature, not air temperature, and you cannot estimate that by feel.