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Oct 31, 2024

The Best Electric Knife Sharpeners, Tested and Reviewed

We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. An easy way to cook better? Cut better. In This Article Food & Wine / Russell

We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation.

An easy way to cook better? Cut better.

In This Article

Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

A dull knife is a dangerous knife. While a razor-sharp blade may feel intimidating, it is infinitely safer than a dull and poorly maintained knife. Sharp knives sail through tough butternut squash with little pressure needed, and hack apart chicken joints with a single slice. With a dull knife, you need to press harder, upping the probability of a slip and increasing the chances that you’ll injure yourself or make a mistake. Proper knife care is the solution. A good sharpening session can turn any knife, even a cheap one, into a precise and effective tool.

Sharpening knives can be a complex and time-consuming process, but electric options take all the difficulty out of it. The best electric knife sharpeners can turn a dull nightmare into a razor-sharp blade with just a few strokes. We tested more than a dozen of these machines to find the best options for all sorts of slicers.

This sharpener delivers incredible results at an angle of either 15 or 20 degrees.

It's pricy, bulky, and requires a little practice to use most effectively.

Chef'sChoice makes a lot of high-performing electric options, but its 1520 model came out at the very top of the heap in our overall testing of knife sharpeners. Just a single pull through its slots yielded the very sharpest blade of the whole session. It has separate settings for 15- and 20-degree angle sharpening, along with a magnetic block to collect dust and shavings that we found really helpful. It even works with both straight and serrated blades!

We did note that it takes some practice to nail the technique. You have to apply just the right amount of pressure and move at just the right speed for perfect results. (On the other hand, this is the case with basically any knife sharpener, electric or manual.) It's also somewhat expensive and bulky for a knife sharpener, even compared to other electric options. If you have room in the back of a cabinet, though, it's worth having on hand.

Dimensions: 10 x 4.25 x 4.25 inches | Weight: 4.15 pounds | Abrasive Material: Diamond

Clear instructions and angled slots make this inexpensive sharpener a breeze to use.

It didn’t sharpen the heel as effectively as the rest of the blade.

If you’ve never used an electric knife sharpener, this is the model for you. The instructions are clear and walk you through exactly how to pull through your knives, what stage to use when, and — most importantly — what not to do. The slots leave no wiggle room as you pull the knife through at the correct angle, and we found that this feature delivered highly consistent results. For its low price, that's really impressive.

Our test knife performed well after sharpening, except toward the heel of the blade. The EverSharp just doesn't do as good of a job at the very beginning of each pull through the slot.

Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.2 x 4.8 inches | Weight: 2.95 pounds | Abrasive Material: Sapphirite

This super-effective machine can sharpen knives anywhere and everywhere.

It costs more than its corded cousin and doesn't perform any better.

Ever checked into a vacation rental with a "fully equipped kitchen" only to find a block full of knives that cut more like spoons? This is the device for you. It works the same as the Chef'sChoice 1520 above but has a rechargeable battery for up to 45 minutes of cordless sharpening at once. You can bring it to an Airbnb, on a camping trip, or when staying with friends and family to give everybody's blades a quick freshening-up.

The downside with the DCB1520 is that it's significantly more expensive than the regular 1520. Both machines deliver incredible sharpening performance; we're just not sure if getting rid of the cord adds that much value.

Dimensions: 10.5 x 6 x 4.5 inches | Weight: 2.5 pounds | Abrasive Material: Diamond

This sharpener easily puts an extra-fine angle on blades, for high cutting precision.

It's quite expensive and is specialized for carbon steel knives.

Wüsthof makes some of our favorite knives in lots of categories, and it's not surprising that the brand's knife sharpener also scored well in our tests. This machine is set to a 14-degree angle, which is higher than the more common 20 or 15 degrees. That gives you more precision and control in cutting, but it works best with hard (and expensive) carbon steel blades. Many types of stainless steel are too soft to hold a high angle.

We loved how user-friendly the Easy Edge was in testing. The instructions were easy to follow to take the knife through its separate shaping, sharpening, and refining stages. We also appreciated the non-slip layer on the bottom, making it easy to pull the knife through confidently. However, it's a very pricy machine and can only create 14-degree edges. If you know that's what you want, this is a great option.

Dimensions: 6.75 x 5.75 x 4 inches

This adjustable sharpener can handle blades of all shapes and sizes.

It didn't work as well on the tips of blades, and left cosmetic scratches on their sides.

We loved the jack-of-all-trades nature of this sharpener — it can deal with serrated knives, thick cleavers, tiny boning knives, santokus, hunting knives, really any shape you can throw at it. The three slots adjust to fit the width of the blade and delivered an astounding improvement in sharpness after a single cycle. The Professional EverSharp costs more than the original version above, but it's a lot more versatile and still quite inexpensive overall.

The weakness of this machine in testing was that it didn't quite sharpen all the way to the tip of blades, especially those with a curved shape. It also tended to scratch the sides of the blade if we put too much pressure on it. That doesn't affect cutting performance, but it's certainly an aesthetic negative.

Dimensions: 18.43 x 11.25 x 2.18 inches | Weight: 5.1 pounds | Abrasive Material: Sapphirite

This precision machine is what you'll find in many restaurant kitchens.

It's complicated to use, and costs more than a similar Chef'sChoice model.

This particular knife sharpener can be found in restaurant kitchens worldwide. Michael Murdy, the food scientist and chef behind Robust Kitchen, always recommends Chef’sChoice and loves the 15XV in particular because “[it's] a more advanced model with features such as three-stage sharpening and a diamond wheel.” The big advantage the 15XV has over the 1520 above is its third and final step, using a flexible abrasive to polish the blade and prolong its sharpness, especially with serrated knives.

This sharpener left us with chef-level edges in tests, breezing through the paper and carrots and producing especially impressively thin tomato slices. What we didn’t love was how confusing the instructions and process were. If you're not an experienced sharpener, you'll probably have to read through everything several times before you figure it out. It's also quite a bit more expensive than the Chef'sChoice 1520, with the only major difference being in that third polishing stage.

Dimensions: 10 x 4.25 x 4.25 inches | Weight: 4.2 pounds | Abrasive Material: Diamond

Food & Wine / Russell Kilgore

Three automated programs let this sharpener improve your blades with ease.

There's only one angle setting, and it's pretty pricy.

Work Sharp's machine eliminates the guesswork from knife sharpening. Its trio of settings — shape, sharpen, and refine, depending on how dull a blade you're starting with — automatically apply the right amount of pressure and run for exactly 90 seconds. The ceramic-lined belt will work with harder-than-steel ceramic blades, and thanks to the one-sided slots, you can even deal with single-bevel knives specialized for right- or left-handed cooks.

The main problem with this high-end machine is its high price, more than almost any other on our list. It also offers only one angle setting, at 17 degrees. That's a good middle-of-the-road choice that works with just about any knife, but there's no adjustability at all.

Dimensions: 7.25 x 4.5 x 5.2 inches | Weight: 2.75 pounds | Abrasive Material: Ceramic

We love the Chef’sChoice 1520 AngleSelect Professional Electric Knife Sharpener for its all-around stellar performance in our tests and its versatility with various kinds of knives. For a more budget choice, the Presto EverSharp Electric Knife Sharpener simplifies the process of getting the correct angle, at an impressively low price.

This story incorporates results from two sets of knife sharpener tests that incorporated 17 electric sharpeners in total. We started by dulling knives using the coarse side of a whetstone, then sharpening them following each machine's instructions. We made notes on the simplicity of the actual sharpening process and measured the edges in a variety of ways.

After completing our other tests, we revealed the retail prices of the sharpeners to consider and compare value.

Work Sharp E2 Kitchen Knife Sharpener ($50 at Amazon)

This sharpener was incredibly easy and intuitive to use, even for someone with little knife sharpening experience. It just didn't sharpen blades as well as competitors.

Chef'sChoice 130 Professional Electric Knife Sharpening Station ($123 at Amazon)

Chef'sChoice has many, many sharpener options, all of which do a great job. The 130 is very similar to the 1520, but it costs a little more and has only a 20-degree option where its cousin offers an adjustable angle.

Work Sharp Ken Onion Knife Sharpening Tool ($160 at Amazon)

This fully customizable power tool is a good choice for an edge obsessive. It lets you set any angle from 15 to 30 degrees, and its wide belt and open layout can sharpen knives, scissors, garden shears, axe blades, and more. It's complicated to use and expensive, though, probably more than most people need.

The low performers in our test shared one thing in common: They didn't make knives sharp. There wasn't a strong connection between price and quality; some machines just worked better than others. Some of that was down to ineffective sharpening in the first place, and some to models that were too difficult to use properly.

Sharpening a knife with an electric sharpener is one of the easiest ways to restore the edge to your blade. But some have more steps and are more complicated than others. If you’re new to knife care or don’t have the time to labor over a sharpener all day, you’ll want to look for one with fewer steps and a mechanism to maintain the right angle without effort. If you want a more precise edge with more customized options, you'll also need some practice to get optimal results.

If you sharpen the edge of a blade to a very narrow angle, it will offer more control and precision over slicing but also won't hold its sharpness for as long. On the other hand, a wider edge will last longer but not cut quite as precisely. The right angle for you is up to a combination of blade style and personal preference, but some sharpeners offer just one option. If you have a large assortment of knives, or if you're an advanced enough sharpener that you have opinions about blade angles, an adjustable model could be for you. (As a general guideline, 20 degrees is standard for a larger, heavier chef's knife, and 15 degrees is better for a small chef's knife, as well as fillet, boning, or utility blades.

To sharpen a knife effectively, a sharpener needs an abrasive that's harder than the blade itself. Diamond is a popular choice: As the hardest mineral on Earth, it can handle almost anything without wearing down. Another material you'll find in professional-level equipment is sapphirite, which is not quite as hard as diamond but still works well on any kind of steel. The ultra-hard ceramic materials used for some knife blades can also be used to sharpen them, while cheaper machines might use softer and less effective stainless steel.

Most electric knife sharpeners will have at least two stages of increasing fineness. The coarsest setting is used to repair any major damage and prepare the blade, and the next one brings it to a more precise edge.but some have more. Finer stages beyond this work like a honing steel to keep a sharp knife sharper for longer. If your sharpener has a honing or polishing stage, you can use just this more often than a full sharpening to maintain the blade.

Inside an electric knife sharpener are rotating abrasive plates or belts that "sand down" the blade to remove microscopic chips and scratches. You pull the knife through a series of slots that hold it against the abrasive at just the right angle to get the blade progressively sharper. Many models are also adjustable to set a different sharpening angle or accommodate different shapes and types of knives.

That depends on how often you use them, what you use them for, and how well your treat them. Kam Talebi, CEO and head chef of The Butcher’s Tale in Minneapolis, Minnesota cuts down on how often he has to sharpen by regularly maintaining his knives. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I always hone my knife before each use, ' he says. “We teach all of the cooks to keep the knives honed and to never use them for anything they aren’t designed for...But cooks are going to keep using knives as hammers, so the electric sharpener helps.”

If you're a restaurant cook like Kam, or just especially hard on your knives, you might need a full sharpening session every month. For most home cooks, every two or three months should do it. A dull knife is a dangerous knife, so if you find it harder than usual to cut food, it's probably time to sharpen.

It depends on the sharpener. Any model should work on a straight-bladed knife with a double bevel, which means the blade is sharpened on both sides to a V-shaped edge. The covers the vast majority of the basic chef's knives out there.

However, some knives — especially Japanese blades intended for cutting fish — are sharpened on just one side, for an asymmetrical profile called a single bevel. This offers lots of control but has to be customized for a left- or right-handed user and will be destroyed by an electric knife sharpener that works on both sides of the blade at once. There are some sharpeners equipped for single-bevel knives, but they're more complicated to use.

Serrated blades like bread knives also might not work in many sharpeners. It takes a specialized machine to sharpen these without wearing down the teeth. Check your manual to see what kinds of knives your machine can handle.