This $300 pizza oven can easily help elevate your summer pizza nights

If you enjoy homemade pizza but don’t love the hassle that comes with it, an electric pizza oven may be the ideal upgrade. The Ninja Artisan Outdoor Pizza Oven is aimed at people who want delicious pizza nights without having to deal with things like propane or wood pellets, unlike many other pizza ovens.

I need to preface this review by admitting that I am no pizza connoisseur, but I ended up with quick, restaurant-style pizzas using the oven, largely thanks to its simplicity and easy-to-use design.

The oven plugs into a standard outdoor outlet and gets up to 700°F. It’s worth noting that although it’s electric, it’s not suitable for indoor use. 

It features five pizza settings: Neapolitan, New York, Thin Crust, Pan Pizza, and Custom that you can quickly toggle between. It comes with a pizza stone that can cook 12-inch pizzas. While I found that the 12-inch size was perfect for me and my husband, some may wish for the option to make bigger pizzas when feeding a larger crowd.

Since the oven has heating elements on both the top and bottom, pizzas cook evenly and consistently without needing to rotate the pie, manage a flame, or constantly babysit the cooking process, especially once you’ve gotten familiar with the different modes.

Just like the cooking process, setup was quite easy. All I had to do was remove the oven and pizza stone from the box and packaging, plug it in, and start the preheating process. 

I first tested the Neapolitan setting, which cranks the oven to its max temperature of 700°F and can cook a pizza in just three minutes. It took about 20 minutes for the oven to preheat, and it emitted a beeping sound to let me know it was ready. I had my first pizza ready on the pizza peel that Ninja sent me alongside the oven (sold separately), and I was able to easily shimmy it onto the pizza stone inside the oven. 

After that, you just need to push the “start” button to begin cooking the pizza and begin the timer. While the pizza is cooking, you can adjust the timer using the dial if you want to cook it for a custom amount of time. 

While I did keep an eye on the pizza through the small front window and internal light to make sure it didn’t burn, the three-minute cook time ended up being perfect, leaving me with a pizza that had an airy crust, puffed edges, and light charring. The airy crust is something I was never able to achieve when making homemade pizzas in my standard kitchen oven. 

For the subsequent Neapolitan pizzas that I made, I didn’t have to keep an eye on them and instead relied on the timer to beep and let me know when they were ready. 

It’s worth noting that if you’re looking for that authentic wood-fired flavor, you won’t get that with this oven. But if you’re happy with consistent, reliable results, then this oven is perfect for you. 

I also tried the New York setting, which sets a lower temperature than the Neapolitan mode and has a longer cook time. I used this setting for a topping-heavy pizza to get an even bake and more doneness in the middle. With this setting, I got less of a char on the crust, which is what I was looking for. 

As for cleaning the oven, it’s fairly straightforward and low maintenance since you don’t have to deal with soot from an open flame. The interior can be easily wiped down with a damp cloth to remove crumbs and any light messes. For the pizza stone itself, I scraped off debris after it cooled down, since you’re not supposed to use soap on a pizza stone because it’s porous and can absorb water and potentially crack or shatter when exposed to high heat.

What I like most about the pizza oven is that homemade pizza nights no longer feel like a weekend-only activity. Before, making pizza at home felt like too much of a project for a weekday, so I saved it for occasional weekends. But with how fast and simple the Ninja Artisan oven is to use, homemade pizza now feels like something I can quickly make after work without it feeling like a task.

I think the pizza oven is worth buying if you want to make restaurant-style pizza at home without the complexity of traditional pizza ovens.

The Ninja Artisan Pizza Oven costs $300 and comes in four colors: green and gold, blue and gold, black and gold, and dark gray.