I Measured 677°F in the Chefman Home Slice - Its Own Neapolitan Preset Asks for 750°F

How it scores

The stone read 677°F when the oven asked for 750°F

I put an infrared thermometer on this oven's stone at three points, on its own Neapolitan preset, after the full twenty-six-minute preheat. It read 700°F, 650°F and 680°F. That averages 677°F.

Chefman's manual sets the Neapolitan preset to 750°F on both elements. It says so twice - once in the preset table and once in prose, where it explains that a Lower Temp of 700°F and an Upper Temp of 500°F is what gives a thin crust its crunch. So the number the oven is working to is not in dispute. The stone arrived seventy-three degrees short of it.

The box says 800°F. That figure is real: the manual's own burn-in instruction has you set both elements to 800°F by hand in Manual mode. But no preset reaches it, and the one named for the style that needs the most heat sets 750°F and delivers 677°F on the stone.

I bought this oven from a friend who bought it himself. Chefman did not supply it, did not discount it, and had no idea it was being measured.

The ready light is not a temperature

The more useful finding came from measuring the same oven twice on different presets.

On Thin Crust, the oven indicated it was ready after about eight minutes. The stone read 480°F. The preset was asking for 700°F. That is a shortfall of two hundred and twenty degrees at the moment the oven told me it was ready to cook.

On Neapolitan, given the full twenty-six minutes, the stone came within seventy-three degrees of its set point.

The gap closes as the preheat runs longer. That points at the ready indication rather than at the elements: the oven is deciding it is at temperature from something that is not the stone, and it is worst on the presets that promise to be quick.

I am not the first person to notice. Among the reviews Chefman publishes on its own product listing, one owner writes: *"Seems to work well. Keep the oven on longer than the preheat timer so that the stone heats up properly too."* No thermometer, no set-point table, just the bake - and the same conclusion.

**What it means if you buy one.** The preheat timer on this oven is a suggestion, and the shorter the preset, the less it means. **What to do about it.** Ignore the ready light and give it the full twenty-six minutes whatever preset you have selected, or buy a cheap infrared thermometer and check the stone yourself. The second is better, and it is what I would do.

Fifty degrees across the stone

The three readings were 700°F, 650°F and 680°F. That is a fifty-degree spread from one side of the stone to the other, and it is the widest I have measured in this category.

For scale, I read thirteen degrees across the stone on the Current Model P+ using the same instrument and the same three-point method, and thirty-six degrees on the Blackstone 8027. Every one of those figures comes from a single recorded session, so they are comparable to each other in the way that matters.

Fifty degrees means you are managing a hot side. A base will colour unevenly, and where you place the pizza changes the bake. It is a workable oven - you learn where the hot spot is and you turn the pizza - but it is work the P+ does not ask of you.

It is a New York oven wearing a Neapolitan button

A Neapolitan base wants 750°F or more at the stone so it can bake in sixty to ninety seconds. That is the standard I applied when I measured the Blackstone 8027 at 656°F and called it a New York oven. At 677°F the Chefman is a New York oven too - twenty-one degrees hotter, and in the same category.

That is not a failure. New York style is what most people cook most of the time, and this oven does it well: I cooked on it repeatedly and the bakes were good. The problem is the button. If you buy this oven because it has a preset labelled Neapolitan, you are buying it for the one thing it does not do.

**What to do about it.** If Neapolitan is why you are shopping, this is not the oven. If you want a good indoor oven for New York and thin-crust styles, it is a reasonable one, and the preset labels are the least reliable thing on it.

Chefman's manual tells you to override Chefman's preset

There is a troubleshooting table in the user guide. One row reads *"Raw base/top of pizza too dark - Too much heat on top. Reduce Upper Temp and/or increase Lower Temp."* That is Chefman describing the fault their own preset produced on my unit, and prescribing the fix.

That is the symptom my Thin Crust reading produced - a top running 150°F above its set point over a stone running 220°F below it - and the remedy the manufacturer offers is to stop using the preset and drive the two elements by hand.

The manual is unusually good otherwise. It publishes a full preset table with both element temperatures and recommended times, a preheat range, the two-hundred-degree limit between the elements, the burn-in procedure and the stone-cleaning routine. Very few makers in this category publish that much, and it is the reason I can be this specific about where the oven falls short. But a preset exists so you do not have to think about element temperatures, and this one asks you to.

Twenty-six minutes, and the only honest preheat I have measured

Twenty-six minutes to a usable stone sounds slow. Set against what the rest of the category publishes, it is the opposite of a failing.

Chefman's manual states that preheating *"ranges from 1 to 26 minutes."* I measured twenty-six on the hottest preset and about eight on a middling one. Both ends of their published range landed on their own presets.

Of every oven I have timed against a maker's own preheat figure, this is the only one that did not overrun it. The Gozney Roccbox markets twenty minutes and took me forty-two. The Ooni Koda 16 markets twenty and took thirty-five. The Karu 12 on wood markets fifteen and took thirty.

**What it means if you buy one.** A shopper comparing published preheat figures picks a twenty-minute oven over this twenty-six-minute one and waits longer in the kitchen. **What to do about it.** Treat a maker's preheat claim as marketing unless somebody has timed it, and when you find a maker publishing a number that makes their product look slower, weigh it accordingly.

What a session costs you in time

The manual carries a figure almost nobody quotes. *"Stone needs at least 5 minutes in between pizzas to come back up to temperature."* That is Chefman's own number, and it changes what this oven is for.

Put that with the preheat. Twenty-six minutes to start, then two and a half minutes of bake and five minutes of recovery for each pizza after the first. Feeding six people is a little over an hour of oven time, most of it waiting.

The marketing number is the two-and-a-half-minute bake. It is true, and it describes about a twentieth of the evening.

**What to do about it.** If you are cooking for two, this is a non-issue. If you are feeding a party, either accept a staggered service or look at an oven with a heavier stone, because stone recovery is what that five minutes is about.

Every rating this oven has is Chefman's own

Independent reviews of this oven exist - a written one that outranks everybody, and four on video. What does not exist is an independent set of owner ratings.

The largest set is 735 ratings and 271 written reviews on one retailer's listing. Every row is footed as supplied by Chefman, and the seller of record is Chefman's own direct account. A second retailer's 144 are labelled as syndicated from Chefman on their face. So every star rating attached to this oven traces back to the maker. Independent reviewers have covered it; independent owners have not been counted separately from Chefman's own feed.

That is not an accusation - the labelling is right there, and a maker publishing its own reviews and saying so is behaving properly. But it changes what those numbers can tell you. The average across that set is 4.6 and the share at two stars or below is 2.9 percent, and neither figure describes what independent buyers think, because no independent buyers are in it.

For comparison, the only fair peer is another maker's own feed, and the Blackstone 8027's published reviews run 16.4 percent at two stars or below. Two manufacturers publishing their own customers, five-fold apart.

**What to do about it.** Read the review count on this product as a measure of how many people bought it, not of how it holds up. And when you are comparing star ratings between two ovens, check whether you are comparing the same kind of number.

The warranty follows the seller, not the box

Chefman's warranty is one year, United States and Canada, for manufacturer defects under household use. It is non-transferable and applies only to the original purchaser, and it is void without proof of purchase. Registration is encouraged but not required, which is better than several of its rivals.

The line that matters is the one about where you bought it. The warranty is *"available on sales through authorized distributors and retailers only."* That condition attaches to the seller, not to the oven.

Chefman lists this oven at $499.99, reduced from $599.99. It sells for a great deal less than that in practice. I have seen it at three hundred dollars, at two hundred on sale, and at a hundred and seventeen after a gift card.

**What it means if you buy one.** The cover attaches to where you bought it, not to the oven. **What to do about it.** Before taking a heavily discounted one, ask the seller whether they are an authorized Chefman retailer and keep the receipt either way. I have asked Chefman for their authorized-seller list and will publish the answer here; I am not going to name any seller as unauthorized on inference.

Who makes it

Chefman holds household safety listings on both registries I can read. The ones that matter for an oven are UL-1026, electric household cooking and food serving appliances, and CAN/CSA No. 64, household cooking and liquid-heating appliances, alongside the general household standard CSA 60335-1. That is worth having. The CROSSON I looked at is listed as commercial equipment with no household file at all.

The files themselves are held by Guangdong Midea Kitchen Appliances Manufacturing and by Jiangsu Kunge Intelligent Technology. Chefman is a brand on somebody else's certificate. The legal entity on the warranty is RJ Brands, LLC, trading as Chefman.

None of that is a quality claim in either direction - Midea is a large and capable manufacturer. What it tells you is where the engineering and the spares path sit, which is not with the name on the front.

I could not read a model-level listing for RJ25-PO12 on either registry; that detail sits behind a subscription. So I can tell you Chefman holds household listings. I cannot tell you this specific oven is named on one.

What I could not measure, and what I have asked

The stone's material and thickness are not published anywhere I can find, and neither is the oven's weight. The manual gives no clearance distance at all - it tells you not to stand the oven on a stovetop, which is blunt and useful, but never how much room it needs, which is the figure you want when you are fitting a countertop appliance under a wall cabinet.

There are no error codes. There is a symptom-based troubleshooting table, and it is a good one, but no diagnostic code anywhere in twenty-four pages. If something electrical fails you have nothing to look up and nothing to quote.

I have put my measurements to Chefman in writing, with their own preset set-points beside them, and asked three things: what the oven uses to decide it is at temperature, whether 750°F is intended as an element target rather than a stone temperature, and which sellers are authorized. That letter went on 25 August 2026 and the reply window is open. Their answer will be published here in full when it arrives.

Who should buy it

Buy it if you want a competent indoor oven for New York and thin-crust pizza, you are cooking for two or three, and you can find it well under its list price. It bakes well, the documentation is better than most of the category, and the maker publishes a preheat figure that turns out to be true.

Do not buy it if you want Neapolitan. It will not get there, whatever the preset is called.

Do not buy it if you need the oven to be ready when it says it is, or if a fifty-degree spread across the stone is going to bother you more than it bothers me.

And whatever you pay for it, find out whether the seller is authorized before you need the warranty rather than after.

How it compares

Also worth considering

Blackstone 8027 E-Series Electric Tabletop

The closest comparison and a hundred dollars cheaper. I measured 656°F at its stone against this oven's 677°F, so both are New York ovens rather than Neapolitan ones. Its stone was more even than this one at 36°F against 50°F. Where it loses is what happens if a part fails.

Current Model P+ Electric Pizza Oven

Two hundred dollars more and the oven this one is not. I measured 855°F at its stone with a 13°F spread, so it does Neapolitan properly and evenly. Worth knowing before you buy: on every specification its maker publishes it is the same machine as their cheaper Model P.

Certifications & safety

• Household class is on the certifying body's own register under Chefman LLC: UL-1026, Electric Household Cooking & Food Serving Appliances, and CAN/CSA-C22.2 No. 64, Household Cooking & Liquid-Heating Appliances, alongside the general household standard CSA 60335-1. Register row saved 2026-08-17.
• Brand-level only. The register names the company and the standard; it does not name model RJ25-PO12, and model detail on the other registry sits behind a subscription. Chefman holds these listings - I cannot show that this oven is on one.
• The underlying files are held by Guangdong Midea Kitchen Appliances Manufacturing and Jiangsu Kunge Intelligent Technology, not by Chefman.