Ooni’s pizza ovens are popular choices for baking restaurant-quality pies at home. In fact, the Karu 16 is my top pick for a multi-fuel option in our best pizza ovens guide. That model is spacious, accommodating 16-inch pizzas and allowing you to bake and roast thanks to the extra vertical space. The Karu 16 has been around for a while now, so Ooni has taken the opportunity to give it a big overhaul while keeping the price the same. The new Karu 2 Pro maintains many of the great design elements from the Karu 16, but adds some key upgrades to improve upon an already winning formula.
First, the digital display for the Karu 2 Pro got a big upgrade. The black and white panel is gone, replaced by Ooni’s Digital Temperature Hub that looks similar to what’s on the Koda 2 Max. This piece of tech not only gives you a clear indication of oven and food temps (via a wired probe), but it will send those stats to your phone via Bluetooth. To help you adjust temperature of the oven, there’s a new air intake lever on the back of the Karu 2 Pro near the fire box. This gives you another place to coax the air flow besides the one that’s on the exhaust chimney, allowing you to run the oven as low as 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Lastly, the door of this new model has more glass and less framing, giving you a clearer view of what’s going on inside without having to open the oven.
Of course, this is an Ooni product, so there are certain things you can bank on. Primarily, there’s the fact that the Karu 2 Pro can hit 950 degrees Fahrenheit in 15 minutes. At those temps, you can cook a Neapolitan-style pizza in about a minute or easily sear a steak with a grill pan. The powder-coated, carbon steel exterior helps keep heat in while protecting the Karu 2 Pro, and folding legs provide easy transport. And since this is a multi-fuel oven, you have the option of attaching a gas burner when you don’t want to use wood or charcoal (additional purchase required).
The Karu 2 Pro is listed as “coming soon” on Ooni’s website for $799, the same price as the Karu 16 when it arrived. No word on preorders or an on-sale date, but you can sign up via the link below to be notified when the oven is up for purchase. What’s more, the Karu 16 is currently available for $649, but it will soon be retired. The Karu 12G and Karu 12 will remain in the company’s multi-fuel lineup.
