Ooni Koda 2 Max 24-Inch Propane Portable Outdoor Pizza Oven - UU-P2B100

This is the third time I've tried to post this review. The previous two times the review never showed up despite that I received a "verify your email" email and clicked the link they sent. It's kinda suspect that a non-5 star review just isn't showing up. It's a mixed bag. It does some things very well and some things quite poorly. First, the good. If you want to turn out 9 to 12 inch neopolitan pizzas then the oven will get the job done admirably. If you want a serious broil then the oven will get the job done. Anything that involves scorching top and bottom heat for a short period of time will work well in this oven. I really wanted to make large, 20 inch+ NY style pizzas in this oven. This is where the not so good started to show up. The oven is designed with top heat only, there is no heating coming from under the stones. This is fine for something like neopolitan pizzas where you want extremely high top and bottom heat for a short period of time. The stones themselves have rather limited thermal mass. Doing a 2 minute cook for a neopolitan is no issue. However, doing a 5-6 minute cook for a moderately thicker NY style pie starts to become an issue. Ideally a NY pie is cooked in a deck oven with consistent top and bottom heat for the entire bake, at a constant temperature somewhere between 550-600. Since the cooking stones in Koda 2 Max don't hold a tremendous amount of heat, you tend to need to overheat the stones before launching your pie. The stone temp drops rather significantly over a 5-6 minute cook of a large NY pie. If you're looking to average, say, 575 on the stone during the back then you probably need to heat the stone towards 650 before launching your pie. In turn, instead of a nice even bake on the bottom, you get something that's uneven with a fair amount of burnt spots that are unpleasant. It's not the desirable leopard spotting on a neopolitan pie. Because the bake takes significantly longer on a NY pie, you tend to get legitamitely burnt spots. I also tried baking 16 inch sicilian pies in the standard pans (the ones that are a bit thicker than your standard home baking sheet). This was a real failure. The stones simply have no where near enough thermal mass to get the bottoms where they need to be and there's really no getting around that since there's no bottom heating element. Basically, the oven really struggles with bottom heat, getting worse as the dough on whatever you're making gets thicker and as the form factor gets larger. Anything 16 inch+ in diameter and it's going to be covering enough of the cooking surface that hardly any heat from the burners is making it's way into the stones. If you're cooking a 20 inch pizza then you must have essentially all of the bottom heat you're going to need in the stones before you launch, and that's an issue given the thermal mass of those bottom stones is lacking. Another thing you'll find is if you actually try to cook a 20 inch NY pizza, you're going to have your crust sitting really close to the fire sources on the two sides of the oven. And if you're trying to do a 5-6 minute cook then you're pretty much guaranteed to end up with burned spots around a fair amount of the crust. I was rotating my pies constantly and still ending up with burned crusts by the time the middle of the pie was baked. I can't recommend doing a 20 inch pie, you gotta go smaller to avoid the burned crust and to have a decent change of having enough heat in the bottom stones to get the whole pie baked in an acceptable way. Overall, this oven is great for neopolitan pies but really fell short on everything else I wanted to try, including the 20 inch NY pies they advertise it for.

Nice unit only issue is trying to fire it up. It takes a while for the propane to flood the tube for it to ignite you have to keep going back-and-forth until it gets going

This is my third pizza oven. Frist oven was an Alfa wood burning Ciao great oven, looked cool but difficult to keep temps up for multiple pies. The second was Koda 12. Once again great oven, easy to control temp . Took advantage of the upgrade program to get the 2 Max. Best thing I have ever done.First pizza was Detroit style… turned out great. This last weekend did Neapolitan, tossed two pies next to each other… both turned out perfect.

If you want your family over all the time… purchase one of these!!! They love to throw whatever they want on them and boom they are done and delicious. Tip: Use 00 Flour on the pizza board when transferring to oven so there is no issue sliding it off the board and also make sure dough is room temperature.

It's a mixed bag. It does some things very well and some things quite poorly. First, the good. If you want to turn out 9 to 12 inch neopolitan pizzas then the oven will get the job done admirably. If you want a serious broil then the oven will get the job done. Anything that involves scorching top and bottom heat for a short period of time will work well in this oven. I really wanted to make large, 20 inch+ NY style pizzas in this oven. This is where the not so good started to show up. The oven is designed with top heat only, there is no heating coming from under the stones. This is fine for something like neopolitan pizzas where you want extremely high top and bottom heat for a short period of time. The stones themselves have rather limited thermal mass. Doing a 2 minute cook for a neopolitan is no issue. However, doing a 5-6 minute cook for a moderately thicker NY style pie starts to become an issue. Ideally a NY pie is cooked in a deck oven with consistent top and bottom heat for the entire bake, at a constant temperature somewhere between 550-600. Since the cooking stones in Koda 2 Max don't hold a tremendous amount of heat, you tend to need to overheat the stones before launching your pie. The stone temp drops rather significantly over a 5-6 minute cook of a large NY pie. If you're looking to average, say, 575 on the stone during the back then you probably need to heat the stone towards 650 before launching your pie. In turn, instead of a nice even bake on the bottom, you get something that's uneven with a fair amount of burnt spots that are unpleasant. It's not the desirable leopard spotting on a neopolitan pie. Because the bake takes significantly longer on a NY pie, you tend to get legitamitely burnt spots. I also tried baking 16 inch sicilian pies in the standard pans (the ones that are a bit thicker than your standard home baking sheet). This was a real failure. The stones simply have no where near enough thermal mass to get the bottoms where they need to be and there's really no getting around that since there's no bottom heating element. Basically, the oven really struggles with bottom heat, getting worse as the dough on whatever you're making gets thicker and as the form factor gets larger. Anything 16 inch+ in diameter and it's going to be covering enough of the cooking surface that hardly any heat from the burners is making it's way into the stones. If you're cooking a 20 inch pizza then you must have essentially all of the bottom heat you're going to need in the stones before you launch, and that's an issue given the thermal mass of those bottom stones is lacking. Another thing you'll find is if you actually try to cook a 20 inch NY pizza, you're going to have your crust sitting really close to the fire sources on the two sides of the oven. And if you're trying to do a 5-6 minute cook then you're pretty much guaranteed to end up with burned spots around a fair amount of the crust. I was rotating my pies constantly and still ending up with burned crusts by the time the middle of the pie was baked. I can't recommend doing a 20 inch pie, you gotta go smaller to avoid the burned crust and to have a decent change of having enough heat in the bottom stones to get the whole pie baked in an acceptable way. Overall, this oven is great for neopolitan pies but really fell short on everything else I wanted to try, including the 20 inch NY pies they advertise it for.

The split of the two pieces of stone what causes a weak split under my pies, causing the pies to spilt down the middle when it was time to turn my pie. I was considering sending it back, but the return policy read, and I'm paraphrasing "if the oven is used, we'll refund a portion of your purchase price" this pizza oven is very expensive, and you'd think the company would stand by their product

Great oven. I am the chef at a country club in Oregon. I first bought the Koda 16 for home use and to see if it could hold up to potentially use as a pop up pizza offering at the club. While the 16 worked great at home, I didn't feel it was up to semi commercial use. Then I saw the Koda 24. I bought it to make pizza on the course for our invitational tournament and it exceeded expectations. The members were wowed by the quality of the pizza and I'm sure more than a couple have ordered them for themselves. Nice new tool in our kitchen.

The oven emits to much heat in front of the oven making it uncomfortable to rotate the pizza or cook other food.

Large enough to throw a party!! I made 24 pizzas in it on my first use, LOVE it!! Finally a pizza oven large enough to have some fun

I ordered my 2 MAX about an hour after they went on pre-sale status... placed the order immediately. To my surprise, it came in a little over 2 weeks rather than a month or more. Easy to assemble and packaged just like our previous Ooni Karu 16, very well. The oven is fabulous. Large but heats so evenly with the full length double burners, one on each side. It heats within about 25min to 475C and will inch up to 500 C if allowed (in summer weather). You may need to turn it down from max heat once at temp. The oven will cook two pizzas simultaneously - we have tried that a couple times. You can put a BIG pizza in there, for sure. Lighting burners: You need to light one, then turn it down to lowest setting before attempting to light other side. If it is at full flame, the flame comes over to the other side and disrupts the gas flow and the other side doesn't want to light. This is a simple technique and once I figured it out, it has worked every time perfectly. The new thermometer, which goes via bluetooth to the Ooni APP is great, too. Easy to use, color screen, and wonderful to be able to monitor inside with the iphone. The oven has a large footprint so I built a new, granite-top heavy duty table for it with heavy duty lockable wheels, similar to the other one that housed the Karu 16 and my Big Green Egg. You want to follow Ooni recommendations about height so you can more easily see and launch, retrieve pizzas. Wonderful! Also be sure to adhere to requirements about side and rear away from anything combustable cuz this sucker gets really hot on the outside compared to the smaller Ooni ovens. I HIGHLY recommend this oven.