REASONS TO BUY
Portable design
Easily reaches high temperatures
REASONS TO AVOID
Prone to uneven cooking
Difficult to control heat
Challenging to clean
Ooni Koda 2 Review
Even though this oven is portable, it doesn't make it easy to bake quality pizzas consistently
We liked the compact design of the Ooni Koda 2, but the combination of high temperatures and a lack of control made firing it stressful.
Credit: Mallory Paige
By Mallory Paige ⋅ Review Editor ⋅ November 14, 2025
RELATED: The Best Pizza Ovens of 2025
Our Verdict
The Ooni Koda 2 is a bit of a mixed bag. A compact frame and foldable legs make this 14-inch oven practically portable. While its gas burners are capable of impressive heat output—with maximum temperatures exceeding 1100 °F—it was exceedingly difficult to achieve consistently good results with this oven. The top of the oven chamber is excessively hot while the pizza stone remains relatively cool, resulting in pizzas with overly blackened tops and undercooked bottoms. The absence of temperature markings on the dial and insufficient guidance in the user manual made finding the sweet spot frustrating. It took a lot of trial and error, along with many burned pizzas, to master the quirks of this oven. Unfortunately, the Koda 2 is one of the least user-friendly ovens we tested, and we're hard-pressed to recommend it over other Ooni pizza ovens.
Our Analysis and Test Results
With a footprint of just over four square feet and weighing just over 35 pounds, the Ooni Koda 2 is an easily portable 14-inch pizza oven. While a powerful gas burner reaches scorching temperatures, this is one of the least user-friendly ovens we tested.
Maintaining an ideal temperature range proved challenging with the Koda 2.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Cooking Performance
We repeatedly encountered the same fundamental issue while testing the Ooni Koda 2: the heat distribution feels imbalanced, making it one of the most challenging ovens we tested in terms of achieving consistent, quality results.
The intense heat radiating from the tapered flame at the back of the oven aggressively cooks the top of the pizza, while the stone below doesn't maintain enough heat to cook the bottom of the crust properly. We tried numerous approaches — starting with high heat, then turning it down, maintaining lower temperatures throughout, and constant adjustment during cooking — but we consistently ended up with pizzas featuring overly blackened tops and disappointingly doughy bottoms.
We made a lot of pizzas with burnt crusts and raw middles while testing this oven.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Once you've found the right temperature, the Koda 2 can cook a pizza in about a minute and a half, which sounds impressive on paper. However, this quick cook time was a liability when you consider this oven's temperamental nature. There's virtually no margin for error — a few seconds too long and your carefully crafted pizza transforms from slightly charred to inedible. We had to constantly rotate pizzas and adjust temperatures, turning what should be an enjoyable process into a stressful juggling act.
Compared to previous models, this wider oven accommodates pizzas up to 14 inches. However, launching larger pizzas requires precision, as getting too close to the back flame guarantees a burned edge before the center has time to cook through. Even with significant practice, we still made a lot of pizzas with overly blackened crusts. If your kids refuse to eat “gross, burnt pizza,” then you should avoid this oven.
We eventually learned how to operate the Koda 2 to produce some respectable pizzas, but not every time.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Output Power
The Ooni Koda 2 certainly doesn't lack raw power. We recorded peak temperatures reaching an impressive 1102 °F, which put it among the hottest ovens we tested. This should, theoretically, translate to excellent pizza-making capabilities. However, high temperatures alone don't guarantee great pizza.
Authentic Neapolitan-style pizza calls for a stone temperature between 806-896 °F—our experience proves that the optimal baking temperature, for most pizzas, falls closer to the lower end of this range. While this oven can easily hit these marks, maintaining this optimal temperature range requires constant adjustment. We had to crank the heat during preheating, then carefully dial it back while cooking to avoid immediately scorching the pizza top.
Ooni touts that the oven's powder-coated carbon steel shell, packed with an inch of mineral fiber insulation, provides optimal heat retention. While the Koda 2 certainly reaches baking temperatures relatively quickly, the heat distribution within the oven chamber was an issue, regardless of how well it retained heat. The disconnect between the blazing hot chamber temperature and the cooler stone surface made it feel like baking an evenly cooked pizza was a product of luck more than skill.
Control
Temperature control was the Koda 2's Achilles' heel. The tapered flame at the back of the oven should, in theory, provide even heat distribution across the roof of the oven chamber. In practice, unfortunately, this burner design creates hot spots that result in uneven cooking.
The control dial is remarkably unhelpful — a simple knob with no temperature markings, recommended settings, or even basic indicators for optimal cooking zones. This bare-bones approach might appeal to purists who enjoy figuring things out through experimentation, but for most of us just trying to make dinner, it's needlessly frustrating.
The control dial offers limited guidance on setting the optimal cooking temperature for pizzas.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Equally frustrating was the complete lack of guidance from Ooni regarding optimal temperature settings for baking different styles of pizza. The lack of markings on the dial and the absence of any suggestions in the user manual made it nearly impossible to reproduce the same results from one session to the next. Extensive trial and error only wasted ingredients and time while we tried to decode the secret to operating the Koda 2. We felt like we were always on the brink of disaster as we constantly adjusted the temperature for the brief 90 seconds it takes to bake a pizza in this oven.
Without a built-in thermometer, you're flying blind unless you invest in your own infrared thermometer. This is essentially a required accessory that should be included with this oven.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Ease of Use
While setting this oven up couldn't be simpler—we had it ready to go within minutes of unboxing—that's the easiest part of using this oven. Ooni recommends an initial 30-minute preheat at maximum temperature to season and protect the stone from cracking. Although subsequent preheats should have required less time, we regularly preheated the Koda 2 for longer to ensure the pizza stone was adequately heated. Compared to other ovens we tested, this certainly impacted fuel consumption.
Cleaning the Koda 2 presents its own challenges. A relatively low ceiling makes wiping out the interior more difficult, requiring awkward angles to clean the stone and walls. The compact design also makes it less forgiving than other ovens we tested. Launching pizzas needs to be nearly perfect, especially with larger 14-inch pizzas—get it too close to the back flame and you'll have a charred edge before the center even begins to cook. We also experienced frequent flare-ups that required us to clean the stone while cooking. Given the intense temperatures and cramped opening, this proved both difficult and somewhat dangerous.
Despite a wider, 14-inch stone, it's much easier to bake a 12-inch pizza with this oven.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The upside to its compact design is that the Koda 2 is genuinely portable. At just over 35 pounds, it's relatively lightweight, and its small packed size makes it easy to take this oven camping or to a friend's house for a pizza party. While the legs fold neatly up underneath the oven, the temperature control box still sticks out, which worries us a bit that we might one day damage this essential element.
The legs fold up for easy storage, but the control unit sticks out.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Should You Buy the Ooni Koda 2?
The Koda 2 only makes sense if you prioritize portability above all else. If you have limited storage space, its compact, foldable design offers a genuine advantage over other ovens we tested. If you have the patience to master its quirks, high oven temperatures will allow you to produce authentic Neapolitan-style pizzas in a mere 90 seconds. However, inconsistent results with the Koda 2 make it difficult for us to recommend this oven over others we tested.
What Other Pizza Ovens Should You Consider?
The Koda 2 doesn't hold a candle to the cooking performance of the similarly priced Gozney Roccbox. Although the Roccbox is a bit heavier and is limited to 12-inch pizzas, it's the best portable pizza oven on the market. We even had better success with the first-generation Ooni Koda 12, which is cheaper and easier to operate than the second-generation Koda 2. We also thoroughly enjoyed baking pizzas in the multi-fuel Ooni Karu 2.
Side-by-Side Comparison
Compare Ooni Koda 2 versus top competing products:
—Mallory Paige
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