Ooni Volt 12 Review
A super-flexible and easy-to-use pizza oven for all occasions.
Verdict
The Ooni Volt 12 isn’t just an electric version of the outdoor product, but something more intelligent. As well as delivering the high heats needed for pizza (up to 450C here), the Volt 12 is easier to use, with a proper thermostat for temperature regulation and balance control to adjust where the most heat comes from: top or bottom. It is expensive and can get a bit smoky in use, but for pizza all-year round, the Ooni Volt 12 is an exceptional bit of kit that can deliver crispy pizzas in around 90 seconds.
Pros
- Reaches very high temperatures
- Very easy to use
- Innovative balance control
Cons
- Expensive
Availability
- UKRRP: £799
Key Features
- Standalone pizza ovenThis pizza oven can make 12-inch pizzas and connects to a standard 13A plug socket.
- Max temperatureCan reach a maximum temperature of 450°C.
- Indoor and outdoor useIPX4 rated (splash proof), so this oven can be used indoor and out.
Introduction
Showing the world that proper pizza could be cooked at home in the garden (or while camping), Ooni’s gas and wood-fired ovens are hugely popular. If you like the idea but want to cook inside when the weather’s bad and prefer a more controlled environment, the Ooni Volt 12 could be the oven you’re looking for.
Powered by a regular 13A plug, the Volt 12 is a fully electric 12-inch pizza oven, capable of some incredible results. It is expensive, but its simplicity and flexibility may well justify the outlay.
Design and features
- Can be used indoor or outdoor
- Clever temperature and balance controls
- Sits on a standard countertop
Making a product that’s designed for indoor use is quite the challenge, but Ooni has pulled it off, with the Volt 12 looking and feeling like the premium product that it is. Its angular body makes it look like a pizza oven in all the right ways, but there are some changes from the company’s outdoor models.
Foremost, this is a fully electric model, so has a 13A fuse on it. While the Ooni Volt 12 can be used outside and has an IPX4 rating (protection against splashes). It’s also completely safe to use indoors. An insulated body and triple-glazed borosilicate glass door seal the heat inside, while keeping the outside safe to touch.
After using it extensively, I found that the Volt 12 was warm on the outside but never at dangerous levels. All the oven really needs is some space around it, as set out in the helpful manual.
The only real setup is installing the pizza stone in place, which simply slides through the door and sits on the lower element. The oven should be run at maximum temperature for 20 minutes to season this stone.
Overall, the Ooni Volt 12 is quite chunky and weighs 18kg. I found that I could lift it easily enough to store on top of a side-by-side fridge freezer, so that the oven didn’t take up counter space when not in use.
As an electric oven, the Ooni Volt 12 has a set of controls on the front. First, there’s a proper thermostat that runs from 200C to 450C. The maximum temperature is below the maximum temperature some of the gas models can reach, but still plenty hot enough for pizza. As a comparison, 450C is about the same kind of temperature that an oven with pyrolytic cleaning reaches, such as the AEG BPK948330M.
There’s a unique balance control on this oven. This adjusts the split between the top and bottom elements, so you can direct where you want the heat to go. Ooni has pre-programmed the balance for each temperature setting, but you can manually override. For example, if you have a pizza with a lot of toppings, you could finish off with a bit more top heat.
Twist the balance control all the way towards the bottom element, and the oven goes into Boost mode, rapidly heating the pizza stone so that pizza after pizza comes out perfectly. Boost mode lasts for 45 seconds, before the oven returns to its normal heat mode.
Finally, there’s a simple timer control, which runs in 30-second increments up to five minutes, and then one minute increments up to 20-minutes.
Performance
- Exceptional levels of heat
- Very even cooking
- As good as a wood or gas oven
As Ooni says, cooking pizza is about the heat, not the source of that heat particularly. And heat is something that the Volt 12 can deliver.
It takes around 15 minutes to reach the maximum temperature of 450C, although as the manual says, it’s worth using an Infrared Thermometer to take the temperature of the pizza stone and start cooking when it’s the same temperature. In my experience, this took another 10 minutes or so.
I then tested using Ooni’s own Neapolitan pizza dough mix, mixed in a Thermomix and left overnight to prove. Getting the right thickness when hand stretching is as much an art as it is a science, but I didn’t find that it took too long to get desirable results.
I used a perforated Ooni Peel to launch my pizza (topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella) into the oven, where it started to cook immediately. With a wood-fired or gas oven, the heat is at the back, so the pizza needs to be turned regularly; here, I found that the pizza didn’t need to be turned as much, as the heat distribution is much more even.
Stretching the dough on semolina flour, I found that was enough to prevent the pizza sticking to the inside, and I could easily use the peel to remove the pizza and turn it.
The end result was a crisp pizza base and nicely melted cheese on top, delivered in a shade under two minutes. With a lot more practice, perfect pizzas that are much rounder than mine are easy to achieve.
Cooking two pizzas used a total of 0.861kWh (around 30p), which isn’t bad at all. That’s only a shade more than a full-size oven would use to cook a batch of oven chips.
What if things do go wrong and ingredients fall off or the dough sticks? Well, the 450C temperature inside will quite rapidly burn the food and turn it to ash. If this does happen, the oven can get quite smoky, so have a door open or run a powerful extractor fan.
However, this ability is also a bonus. Running at maximum temperature, the Ooni Volt 12 acts as a pyrolytic cleaner. The pizza stone can be flipped over and the oven runs at maximum to burn off any residue.
What else is brilliant about this oven is its flexibility. I used it to cook Naan bread at a lower temperature than pizza. Using the flat pizza stone, the results were far better than I’ve ever achieved in a regular oven using the grill.
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Should you buy it?
You want more control and flexibility:
Dedicated temperature and balance controls, plus indoor usage, makes this the most flexible pizza oven.
You want the freedom to use on the go:
A gas or wood-fired model can be used more easily anywhere outside.
Final Thoughts
Taking the quality bits of a product that’s designed to be used outside and making it work safely indoors is quite the challenge. Ooni has not only done that, it’s made the most of the electric power source to give a new, more flexible experience with dedicated temperature and balance controls. Able to deliver the high temperatures that pizza needs, the Ooni Volt 12 is just as capable of perfect pizza as a wood-fired or gas model, only it’s arguably far easier to use. This model is a lot more expensive than the outdoor models, but if you want pizza all-year round or a greater degree of simplicity, it’s well worth the cash.
How we test
We test every oven we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main oven for the review period
We use an IR temperature sensor to check the internal temperature.
We measure power usage to see how much the oven costs to run.
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FAQs
It draws a maximum of 1600W, so less than a traditional oven.
Yes, it has an IPX4 rating (splash proof), so can be used indoors and out.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
