For the past few years, the Gozney Dome has been the gold standard for anyone wanting a serious outdoor pizza oven at home. It changed the look of patios and backyards forever. It changed what people thought they could cook at home. It made the ritual of pizza night feel like an event.
But even the best products show their quirks once youโve lived with them for years. Owners of the original Dome will, quietly, admit the same handful of frustrations: the stone could develop weak points and crack, managing charcoal was fiddly, the internal space could feel tight, and the heat pattern with either gas or wood was not entirely uniform. It still made great pizza, but there was room for improvement.
The Gozney Dome Gen 2 feels like the company has listened to every one of those user experiences and rebuilt the oven (after careful review) around them. The headline improvements sound simple on paper โ a larger chamber, a new burner design, a sturdier two-piece stone, a digital temperature display โ but what they unlock is a completely different cooking experience. A calmer and more confident cook. And a far more predictable one.
This is the first time Gozney has built an oven that genuinely outperforms the original Dome in every meaningful way.
Set Up and First Impressions
I wonโt sugarcoat the setup. The Gen 2 is large and heavy, as is the accompanying stand. Putting the stand together is fiddly, and it is imperative that you do not tighten the screws until everything is aligned. The box for the Dome itself is comically big, and lifting the oven out and onto the stand requires four people. This is not a one-man Saturday job. Itโs a proper lift, an awkward shuffle, and a long clean up.
Once you get it onto its stand or a bench, everything changes. The Gen 2 settles into place like a permanent fixture. It doesnโt feel like something youโll ever move again โ and you probably wonโt or canโt โ but thatโs part of its appeal. Yes, it will move on the stand, with its wheels locking into place when you reach your desired location, but if the surface underneath isnโt polished concrete, youโre breaking a sweat.
The new digital display is a clear step forward. It pulls out of the unit and charges via USB-C, which is very handy. It reads both the chamber and stone temperatures, removing much of the guesswork that defined the first Dome, and includes inputs for four temperature probes. The display itself feels a touch light for the price, but practically speaking, it is the feature that unlocks reliable, repeatable cooking.
My Dome arrived in the Ultimate Bundle ($6,162) with an arsenal of Gozney accessories, and they are mint, no question. A new enlarged placement peel, turning peel, door, mantel, wood fire control kit, along with cutter and scraperโฆ Tom has left no stone unturned. Itโs a credit to his eye for detail and his desire for the brand to deliver every tool required to succeed.
Everything about the setup and first impressions tells you the same thing: youโre stepping into a different tier now.
Design Changes That Fix the Old Problems
Where the original Dome pulled flame upward through a hole in the stone, the Gen 2 adopts the burner design from the Tread. The flame now enters from the left side, sweeping across the chamber in a smooth arc. It sounds like a small change until you use it.
Removing that cutout in the stone means the floor can be larger, thicker, heavier and, crucially, much stronger. One of the biggest pain points of the original Dome was the inherent weakness near the burner opening. The Gen 2โs dual stone layout feels bulletproof in comparison.
Then thereโs the space. The chamber is significantly bigger โ not in a showy, oversized way โ but in a functional way that immediately changes how the oven behaves. There is more room for airflow, more room for charcoal or wood management if you go that route, and more room to manoeuvre the peel without hitting the walls or the burner.
Most importantly, more room for the pizza to sit away from the heat source. On the old Dome, the side closest to the coal bed or flame could char faster than you wanted. Here, that issue disappears. The thermal balance across the oven feels dramatically more even.
Unlike the Tread, where the pizza can feel cramped against the flame, the Dome Gen 2 gives the flame the room it needs to breathe. The result is the pace of cooking I prefer โ a kind of low and slow, comparatively speaking โ without compromising structure or crust.
Heat-Up, Control, & The Calm of the Bigger Chamber
Heat-up time is broadly similar to the original Dome โ about 30 to 45 minutes on gas to get the stone up to proper cooking temperature. But how it holds and distributes that heat is on another level. The improved burner, the larger chamber, and the sturdier stone combine to create an oven that feelsโฆ steady and consistent.
Cooking on the original Dome required quick reactions; you felt rushed compared to the Gen Dome 2, which allows you to place, rotate and cook with real intention. Thereโs a noticeable improvement in flow, and strangely cooking enjoyment, although itโs hard not to have a smile on your face rotating a perfect pie, while your family watches in awe, in this behemoth.
Rotation is easier because you have more space, although the peel is larger. I forgot just how large on my second cook and hit it on the arc, making a slight calzone out of a pepperoni, and leaving a cheese stain on the stone, which shits me to tears.
Iโve only used it three times, but I feel like I use less semolina when using the Dome Gen 2, which is good because it takes longer to burn off the stone than Dome, perhaps because the heat isnโt as intense. I would say the stone is more predictable, delivering a base and crust that cooks more evenly.
The Actual Cook: A Noticeable Jump in Quality
At this point, I have only cooked pizza on the Dome Gen 2 โ no steaks, no chicken, no cast iron โ and even with that limited testing, the improvement is obvious.
The pizza that came out of this thing was elite. Uniform heat across the base. Beautiful, even leoparding on the crust. A predictable rotation pattern. None of the uneven zones you occasionally battled with on the first Dome. The larger chamber doesnโt just give you room, it gives you control.
The arch itself does not feel dramatically larger than the original, so there is a small learning curve with the bigger peel. But once you settle into rhythm, the peel and the oven work together naturally. And Iโve only cooked with gas thus far.
When wood and charcoal come into play, the additional space will transform fire management. With the old Dome, creating a clean zone for the pizza often required brushing coals aside and working fast. Here, thereโs room for everything to breathe.
Who This Is For
The Gen 2 is not for everyone, and that is the point. It is for the person who cares about consistency, who enjoys the ritual wholeheartedly, and who wants a virtually permanent oven that becomes part of their backyard and their lifestyle, rewarding committed use.
If youโre deciding between this and the original Dome, the answer is simple: get this. If your budget allows, this is the upgrade you want. If youโre new to pizza ovens and want the best version of the experience, this is it.
I mentioned the Tread briefly. It uses the same flame, but the chamber is, in my opinion, too small. The flame overwhelms the space, and despite years of cooking in Gozney products, the Tread never produced a pizza I truly loved. The Dome Gen 2 takes that flame and gives it the room it needs to deliver genuinely world-class pizza.
Value & Verdict
Value truly is in the eye of the beholder with Dome 2. If you have the money (and the space), thereโs no way you are regretting the decision to buy it.
The Gozney Dome Gen 2 smooths the edges and fixes the frustrations of the original Dome. It expands the possibilities and delivers a cooking experience that feels mature. It has the soul of the original Dome, but the engineering of a product refined through years of real feedback.
It is powerful, beautiful, calm and deeply capable, and by far the brandโs โ and the industryโs โ most sophisticated and best performing exterior oven.
If you enjoyed this review of the Gozney Dome Gen 2, you might enjoy some of Boss Huntingโs other reviews below:
