Best Knife Sharpener of 2024
The most important element of a knife sharpener is its ability to sharpen an edge across the length of a knife. That said, there are many other factors that can make other devices a better fit for you. Here are some of those factors:
- Ability to sharpen different types of knives
- Beauty
- Sound
In general, sharpening a serrated knife will require a serrated knife sharpener specifically, but you may also want to sharpen straight paring knives, boning knives, a filleting knife, cleavers, or box cutters (or even a pocket knife or hunting knife). While the Chef’s Choice sharpener is best for chef’s knives, both Presto Three phases And Work sharply appliances offer a bit more flexibility for different blades. Presto, for example, can adjust its slots to guide different blades more effectively. Work Sharp uses attachments and belts of varying coarseness for kitchen knives, pocket knives or scissors — a modular approach that may scare off average cooks but will likely appeal to DIYers.
Despite its reasonable results, the Work Sharp is much better suited to a garage than a kitchen countertop.
Another consideration is how clean your sharpener is: if you sharpen in your garage, you may not be concerned about the steel filings that splash out of some sharpeners, such as the Work Sharp or the Presto Sharpeners. In a kitchen environment, cleanliness is a must, and Chef’s Choice Trizor and the $23 AnySharp Pro Sharpener were the cleanest. That said, all of the above recommendations required minimal cleaning, if any at all.
Finally, noise is a concern for some — and some of these appliances are significantly louder than others. The Chef’s Choice Trizor is a bit quieter than the Presto grinders, but none were quiet. If you want a quiet option, non-electric grinders are your best bet.
Of all the tools I tested, the only one that didn’t seem to have an advantage was the $8 Kadell 3 Stages Sharpener (no longer available), which wasn’t as affordable as the KitchenIQ sharpener and also performed worse than all the other sharpening tools I tested. Other than that, it seems like pretty much any knife sharpener is better than no knife sharpener. So invest in the higher end or buy a $6 tool. Either way, food prep gets a lot easier if you do.
