Equipment Review: Best Electric / Manual Knife Sharpeners & Our Testing Winners

Byamazingfoodstv


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Full testing details and ranking chart:

What if you could buy a knife sharpener that not only repaired the new breed of ultrathin chef’s knives but also honed the wider cutting edge of more traditional blades?

We tested 9 knife sharpeners (5 manual knife sharpeners, 4 electric knife sharpeners) to find the best one:
Chef’sChoice Trizor XV Knife Sharpener
Chef’sChoice Diamond Sharpener for Asian Knives
Kitchen IQ Angle Adjust Adjustable Electric Knife Sharpener
Shun Electric Sharpener
Chef’sChoice Pronto Manual Diamond Hone Asian Knife Sharpener
Victorinox SwissSharp
Miyabi 2-Stage Diamond/Ceramic Handheld Knife Sharpener
Wusthof Two Stage Hand-Held Sharpener

Are Carbon-Steel Knives Worth It? Watch now:

Are You Using the Best Cutting Board? Watch now:

Japanese bladesmiths have long favored chef’s-style knives with blades that are ultraslim—that is, sharpened to about 15 degrees on either side of the blade—and for good reason: In addition to being thin and lightweight, these blades have a supernarrow cutting edge, which helps make them razor-sharp. We’ve also come to favor a thinner edge. After years of testing dozens of knives, our repeat favorite is from Victorinox, a Swiss-made knife that is sharpened to 15 degrees on either side of the edge, allowing it to push and slide through food more easily than do more traditional European blades sharpened to at least 20 degrees.

To maintain that narrow edge, we use a tool specifically designed to sharpen a blade to 15 degrees. Our favorite models, both from Chef’sChoice, are a manual and an electric sharpener that each do a fine job of restoring an ultrakeen edge to an Asian-style knife. But in recent years the trend toward slimmer knives—and slimmer knife sharpeners—has spread west, as European manufacturers including Wüsthof, Henckels, Messermeister, and Mercer have launched their own 15-degree knives and sharpeners. (In fact, Wüsthof and Henckels have discontinued their 20-degree knives.) We were curious to see what these new sharpeners had to offer—and were especially eager to test the claim of one that it can even hone a 20-degree knife to 15 degrees.

So we rounded up nine models (including our previous favorites), five manual and four electric, from both Western and Asian manufacturers and priced from roughly $20 to $200. To evaluate them, we bought nine of our favorite Victorinox chef’s knives and assigned one to each sharpener; we then dulled the knives identically and sharpened them according to manufacturer instructions. To assess sharpness, we slashed sheets of copy paper and sliced delicate tomatoes, repeating the dulling, sharpening, and slicing process four more times with multiple testers.

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41 Comments

  4. Great review for sharpening this particular knife style. What I've found to be a problem is for smaller knives or knives with the handle closer to the back of the knife edge. The entire blade cannot sharpen, so you end up with a section of the back that never makes it into the sharpener and therefore a different looking knife blade that changes shape at the back.

  19. I’m just a home cook but IMHO Smith's adjustable angle knife, electric, sharpener is the best by far. Smith’s makes knives, so they certainly know how to sharpen them. I either sharpen manually or bring out my Smith’s electric sharpener.
    Who has only one angle, 15 degrees on all their knives? As usual America’s Test Kitchen uses very constrained criteria, that always seem to support their prior winners (sponsors? click on the “winner’s link to Amazon and who get $ for your purchase? ATK, yeah, they are really non-biased; LOL).

  20. Let's just tell it like it is, electric sharpeners are preferred in my opinion because I can run the knife thru thru the slots a couple of times and it's ready to go.

    To sharpen a knife properly on a whetstone requires the skill and steady of hand of a surgeon. Plus, who really wants to go through all this mess and fuss?

    For kitchen cutlery, it's the electric sharpener for me.

  23. Work sharp is the only acceptable knife sharpener! It will sharpen everything from a small pocket knife to your largest chefs knife…how could you not include it in your test??? I now doubt everything you've ever done

  27. I have the winning manual sharpener. Even on a deeply dinged cheap old knife it did a great job sharpening it. It's not perfect, but that sharpened knife chops vegetables better than my Wusthof chef knife (though the Wusthof is better for meats).

  31. I own european style knives , japanese knives etc… Sharpening stone, steel hones .. from my experience an automated sharpener need to be compatible with your knives shape.
    My Victorinox isn't happy with my sharpeners, while my " Sanelli " gets an optimal sharpness in seconds with my chinese sharpener.
    It's about wich knife you use 👌👌👍👍

  34. I would not recommend following the advice in this video. The best sharpening system is hands down a whetstone setup. A couple decent stones in something like 500, 1000, and 1200-1500 grit will have you set for any knife. A setup like that will let you do any serious or minor repair, thinning (which is necessary if you want to keep your knife performing after many sharpening), and creating much better edges than with an electric sharpener. It is also really easy to remove way too much metal with an electric sharpener. ATK has good recipes and general gear, but please do not follow their advice on anything knife related (except for their recommendation of the Victorinox Fibrox, that is actually an excellent budget/beginner knife)

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