I Measured 855°F in the Current Model P+ - Above Its Own Claim, and 3°F From the Oven It Replaces

How it scores

The P+ and the P are the same oven on paper

Here is Current's published spec block for the Model P+, and for the Model P, side by side. They are not similar. They are character-for-character identical.

- Product weight 31 lb, packaged 37 lb - 17.5"W × 21.2"D × 14.21"H - Pizza stone 13" × 13", cooking area 12" pizza - 120V, 1,750W, maximum temperature 850F - Cord length 42" - Same box contents, down to "Legs/Control Housing - Plastic"

Same chassis, same element wattage, same stone, same ceiling. The documented difference between a $599 oven and a $699 one is eight cooking modes instead of five.

I want to be careful here, because "identical spec sheet" is not the same as "identical hardware". A maker can change an element, a controller or a seal without changing a published number. What I can tell you is that everything Current publishes is the same, and two thermometer readings taken the same way came out three degrees apart. I asked Current directly whether the extra modes are firmware on the same hardware, and whether a Model P owner could ever receive them. That question is the most useful one on this page. I sent it on 18 August and have had no reply in the five days since.

So is it a new oven, or the old one with more modes?

I could not leave that to a press release, so I diffed the two manuals - Current's own document for the Model P against its own document for the P+.

They are 84% identical, line for line. Both twelve pages. And every difference I found is wording or procedure rather than hardware.

The most telling one runs the wrong way for a "new build" story. The Model P's manual says: "We recommend using a 20-amp breaker and 20-amp GFCI for best performance." The P+'s says: "Minimum requirements: 15A breaker and a 15A GFCI outlet." Both ovens draw the same 1,750 watts. If Current had put a more demanding electrical system in the newer oven, that requirement would have gone up. It went down - which reads like a company correcting over-cautious advice about a machine it already knew.

The rest of the changes are of a piece with that. "Cook setting" became "cook mode" on the control knob, matching five presets becoming eight. There are new warnings about the upper elements and about not running the oven without its stone. The burn-in instruction is new. "GFI" became "GFCI". Neither manual describes a different element, a different controller, a different stone or a different chassis.

So here is where I land, with the limit stated plainly. Everything Current publishes about these two ovens is the same. Their manuals are 84% the same. My thermometer put them three degrees apart. On all the evidence available to me, the P+ is the Model P with three more cooking modes.

But 84% identical manuals is not proof of identical hardware, and I am not going to pretend it is. A manufacturer can change an element supplier, a control board or a thermostat without altering a single published word. The one test that would settle it - the FCC ID, which would tell you whether both ovens carry the same radio module and almost certainly the same control board - is printed in neither manual. I have asked Current directly. If they tell me something changed inside, this section gets rewritten and you will see the correction.

What it is like to cook on

The eight modes are the point of the thing. Current names them from Neapolitan through New York, and each one sets top and bottom heat and a time rather than handing you two knobs and wishing you luck. Coming off the Blackstone - where the manual never explains how to balance its two burners - that is a genuine relief. You are choosing a style, not guessing an element ratio.

The trade is that they are presets. The targets are Current's, not yours. On Neapolitan the oven went where it said it would go and held there, which is what I want from a preset, but a cook who likes to run a deck ten degrees under and stretch the bake will find less room here than on an oven with independent dials.

Its own manual tells you to run it empty on Neapolitan before the first pizza. That is a burn-in, and it is worth saying that Blackstone prescribes none at all while every other maker in this roster does. Current getting the small thing right is a reasonable signal about the big ones.

Two things in the manual that are not on the product page

I read the P+'s 12-page user guide. Two requirements in it never appear on the page you buy from.

It wants a circuit to itself. The manual: "Minimum requirements: 15A breaker and a 15A GFCI outlet with no other appliances running on the [circuit]." At 1,750 watts the oven draws 14.6 amps. That fits a 15-amp circuit with 0.4 amps of headroom and nothing else allowed on the line. If your kitchen counter shares a circuit with a kettle or a toaster, you need to know that before the box arrives, not after.

It wants four inches of air on every side. Also from the manual, with the exterior walls, the door and the window all stated to get very hot. A 17.5 by 21.2 inch oven therefore needs roughly 25.5 by 25.2 inches of clear counter, and it cannot tuck under a wall-cabinet lip or sit against a backsplash.

Neither of those is a fault. Both are the sort of thing that decides whether a $699 appliance is usable in your kitchen, and both are one click deeper than they should be.

The 850°F is on the box and not in the book

Current's product page leads with 850°F. It is in the page title and in the spec block. It is nowhere in the oven's own 12-page manual, whose only temperatures are the Broil options of 400°F and 600°F.

I am reporting that as silence, not as a contradiction - the manual simply never states a maximum. And unlike the Blackstone, where the box said 900°F and the manual quietly gave a 650-750°F working range that my measurement landed inside, here the marketing number and my thermometer agree. The oven does 850°F. It did 855°F for me. The gap between claim and reality on this one is five degrees in the customer's favour.

Every published review of this oven is a free unit

This is the finding I did not expect and the one I would want if I were spending $699.

The maker publishes 27 reviews on its own product page, averaging 4.96. Its own review data marks 25 of those 27 as incentivised - the reviewer was given the oven. One of the 27 is a verified buyer. None is unsolicited.

At an independent retailer there are eight more, and every one of the eight carries the platform's own disclosure that the reviewer received the product free. Not one is a verified purchase.

In the enthusiast forums: nothing. I searched every way a person spells the name - P+, P Plus, P-Plus - and checked again on 23 August in case something had appeared. Not one mention.

In video: nothing. Four different searches, every result filtered to after the July launch. The only thing that surfaces is coverage of the predecessor.

So: nobody who paid for this oven has publicly reviewed it anywhere I can find.

Both disclose it, and that deserves saying. The retailer labels every such review, and Current publishes the incentivised flag in its own review data. Plenty of makers run seeding programmes and tell you nothing. This is checkable precisely because both companies made it checkable, and I am reporting what the ratings are made of, not accusing anyone of hiding anything.

One number to distrust, though. The independent retailer shows "4.2 from 85 ratings" against the P+ - and shows the identical 4.2 from 85 against the Model P, because the ratings are pooled across both products. Four of the ten written reviews predate the P+'s existence, one of them by six months, and the only one-star review in the pool belongs to the older oven. If you are reading that 4.2 as independent evidence about the P+, it is not.

And Current's own page does the same thing. The P+ product page - the one carrying the $699 add-to-cart button - shows its star rating directly above the line "100+ reviews of the Current Model P Pizza Oven". That is the maker's own wording, on the page selling you the P+, saying the rating belongs to the oven it replaces. I read it there on 23 August 2026. A buyer skimming that badge takes it as a verdict on what is in their basket; it is a verdict on the $599 model, and the only reason anyone can know that is that Current wrote it out.

The Good Housekeeping badge on this page was won by the other oven

Current's product renders for the P+ carry a "2026 Good Housekeeping Kitchen Awards Winner" badge in the corner.

The award is real. I checked it against Good Housekeeping's own 2026 Kitchen Awards page, and there is a Current oven on it. It is the Model P. Good Housekeeping names the "Current Model P Smart Electric Pizza Oven" and writes that "few pizza ovens that can reach 850°F can be used both indoors and outside, but this Current model is one." The Model P+ is not mentioned anywhere on that page - the word "Current" appears twice, and both are the older oven.

So a genuine third-party award, won by the predecessor, is displayed on renders of a product that did not exist when the judging happened.

I am not calling that a fake award, because it is not one, and I am not going to tell you Current did it deliberately, because I do not know. What I can tell you is what a buyer sees: a badge from a magazine people trust, on the page for the oven they are about to buy, for a prize that oven did not win. I have asked Current about it.

It also does not sit alone. On the same product page, in the same week, a buyer would also find a retailer rating pooled with the older model, twenty-five of twenty-seven store reviews written by people given the oven free, and a specification block identical to the model that actually won the award. None of those is dishonest on its own. Together they make the P+ look like it has a track record it has not had time to earn.

The certification question, stated exactly

Current Backyard, LLC is the filing entity - that is the company's own legal name from its terms of service, not a guess, and searching the brand alone is how you end up publishing something false.

Under that name, Intertek's public ETL directory returns zero records. To check that the search itself worked, the same sweep was run against a control brand, Middleby, which returned twelve.

The P+'s own 12-page manual carries no ETL, UL or CSA marking anywhere. Its only compliance statement is FCC Part 15, which governs radio interference from the wireless module - not electrical safety.

That is two negative checks, and neither one is conclusive. Intertek is one laboratory of several; Current may well be listed with UL, CSA or TÜV, and zero Intertek records is entirely consistent with that. Intertek also told me directly that its control numbers are internal and never published, so a certified product can have no public file number to find. Unlike Blackstone - where a sibling model was listed and the reviewed one was not, inside a company that clearly does file with Intertek - here the whole company has no Intertek presence, which points at a different certifier rather than at a gap.

I have asked Current which body certifies the P+ and to which standard. I would rather print their answer than print that I could not find one.

What it costs to run

1,750 watts at 120 volts. Current publishes that, to their credit, on the product page.

Nobody publishes a preheat time - not the page, not the manual. One reviewer reports 18 minutes, and that reviewer was given the oven, so take it as a data point rather than a specification. On those numbers a session of preheat plus a few two-to-four minute bakes comes to roughly 0.6-0.7 kWh, call it nine to eleven cents at a typical US rate. Rates vary far more than ovens do, so work yours out with the running-cost tool I built for these ovens.

I have not timed the preheat myself, and I will not print a number I did not measure.

The warranty is ten years and half of it is behind an app

Current offers a limited 10-year warranty with registration, five years without. That is the longest term in this roster, and there is no deadline to register - the 60 days you will see quoted is a risk-free return trial, which is a different thing.

The catch is the mechanism. Registration runs through the mobile app - Settings, then Support, then "Register Product/Guides", then "Register Pizza Oven Warranty" - and Current says to do it before you pair the app to the oven. Five years of cover sits behind a flow most buyers will never complete, on a product they have already paid $699 for. Do it on day one.

Who should buy it

Buy the P+ if you want an indoor oven that reaches genuine Neapolitan stone temperature, holds it evenly enough that you are not nursing a hot side, and takes the guesswork out with presets rather than handing you knobs. On the two things I could measure it is the best indoor electric in this roster, and it beat its own claim doing it.

Do not buy it from Current. At the time of writing Current asks $699 on its own site, and A major independent retailer lists the same oven at $660.83 in Slate and $690.12 in Ocean, both in stock when I checked on 20 August. That is up to $38 saved on the identical product, from a seller with a returns process most people already understand. Those prices move daily, so check both before you click - but check.

And check the Model P's price before you order either. At the time of writing Current is selling the outgoing Model P at $599 with a "LAST CHANCE" tag, against $699 for the P+. Every published specification is identical and my two readings are three degrees apart. If the P is still in stock and you do not need the extra three modes, that is a hundred dollars for the same oven. If it has sold out by the time you read this, the question answers itself.

Skip it if your counter cannot give it a dedicated 15-amp GFCI circuit and four inches of clearance on every side.

What I can and cannot tell you. I cooked on this oven in July 2026, the month it went on sale, and I measured its stone myself - so the 855°F and the 13°F spread are mine. I cannot tell you how it lasts. Nothing about this product is old enough: the oldest review of it anywhere is about six weeks, every one of them was written by someone given the oven, and I have not owned one for a year. Anyone telling you the P+ is reliable - or that it is not - is guessing. I have scored durability at the level of the ovens it competes with and marked it provisional, and I will revise it the moment there is a corpus of people who paid.

Questions I have put to Current Backyard, and will publish the answers to: whether the eight modes are firmware on the same hardware as the Model P, and whether a P owner could receive them · which body certifies the P+ and to which standard · where the 850°F figure comes from, given it is absent from the manual · whether there is a published preheat time · whether the 10-year warranty is transferable · why the 2026 Good Housekeeping badge appears on the P+'s page when Good Housekeeping awarded it to the Model P.

How it compares

Also worth considering

Current Model P Smart Pizza Oven

The oven the P+ replaces, and on every specification Current publishes it is the same machine: 31 lb, a 13-inch square stone, 1,750W, 850°F. I measured its stone at 852°F against the P+'s 855°F. It is on run-out at $599 with a LAST CHANCE tag, and it has something the P+ cannot have yet - fifteen months of owner reports behind it.

Ooni Volt 2

The other serious indoor electric at this price. I measured its stone at 813.7°F on its own Neapolitan preset, about forty degrees under the P+, and it runs on 1,600W. Both ovens work by preset rather than by hand - Ooni calls its system Pizza Intelligence - so the choice is about heat and ecosystem, not about control style.

Certifications & safety

• Not found in Intertek's ETL register under Current Backyard, LLC - manufacturer asked