Countertop Ovens

[Riccardo39]

I have an electric domestic oven that only reaches temperatures of 470 F. I can produce a reasonable pizza in 8 minutes but would love to see what kind of improvement I could get with more heat. The question is: how do I get a hot oven at a cheap-ish price (i.e. < $700)? I live in England and it rains all the time here, so outdoor ovens are a no-no. I've therefore started looking at countertop ovens like this:

http://www.ecateringonline.co.uk/gam-b1-electric-pizza-oven-711-p.asp

I've read a couple of threads here that suggest countertop ovens aren't great, but my question is: if this thing can produce heat of 660 F, surely I'll be able to cook better pizza in it than my domestic oven with a 470 F limit?

Grateful for any advice before I spend money on one of these things. P.S. - I don't have a cleaning cycle on my domestic oven, so can't rig it to hit high temperatures.

[barryvabeach]

It  looks pretty nice.  For one pie, I would guess it would do okay.  When making one pie, if you can get to 600 F or above with control over the top and bottom heat, you can get a much better result, in my opinion, than a home oven.  The primary problem with countertop ovens is that most in the US are designed for 120 volt outlets, and top out around 1800 watts.  So even though they can go up to 600 or higher, it takes a long time to build up the heat for the first pie, and recovery time for a second pizza can be unacceptable.  To get better recovery,  you need more watts or a smaller chamber or both.  I haven't run the numbers on watts per square inch for all the ovens, though Scott has, but I see you have 2000 watts, which is slightly better than most of the 120 volt ovens offered here.  The deck is roughly 14 by 16, which means you have 8.8 watts per inch,  ( 4.4 for top and 4.4 for bottom assuming the elements are the same).    The most recent Chinese one I had that was not very good was at 6.2, so you are better than that.  So if you are doing one, or maybe 2 pies, it might work okay, but my concern is that I don't see any separate controls for upper and lower heating elements.  Without that, it can be tough to balance the heat just right.  I don't know anything about what is available outside the US, so I am not sure if there are better options.