The 3 Best Knife Sharpeners for 2024
For cooks, there are few things in the kitchen that are more frustrating—or dangerous—than dull knives. When you use one, you have less control. And a dull knife requires more effort than a sharp one, thereby increasing your chances of slippage and injury.
Although using a whetstone or jig system is an aspirational ideal, those methods take time and effort to learn, plus you can risk ruining a good knife if either method is done improperly. Luckily, after we tested 20 electric, manual, and rolling-style sharpeners over the years, we’ve found a few models that are great for busy home cooks.
Our picks, the Chef’sChoice 1520 and the Chef’sChoice Trizor 15XV, produce a keen edge, and they’re fast and easy to use. And both sharpeners can refashion even the dullest cutlery—whether Asian- or European-style, stamped or forged, cheap or expensive
Everything we recommend
Top pick
The Chef’sChoice 1520 is reliable, fast, and simple to use. You can choose between a 15- or 20-degree angle, and it quickly turns out a razor edge for almost any kind of knife.
The Chef’sChoice Trizor 15XV is just as reliable, fast, and easy to use as its sibling. It costs a little less, however, so you can sharpen to just one angle: 15 degrees.
Budget pick
The diminutive Work Sharp Culinary E2 outperformed every other sharpener in its price range, but it’s slower and slightly less effective than our top picks.
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Sandpaper-dull knives
As much as it pained us, we dulled brand-new knives by scraping them on 80- and 220-grit sandpaper.
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Professional edge tester
We used a sharpness tester, which measured the force in grams needed to cut through a wire. The duller the knife, the greater the force required.
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The humble tomato
Over the years, to test the real-life sharpness of knives, we’ve sliced through more than 20 pounds of tomatoes.
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Knives from home
We sharpened a range of knives from our own kitchens, including basic chef’s knives, santokus, paring knives, and more.
Top pick
The Chef’sChoice 1520 is reliable, fast, and simple to use. You can choose between a 15- or 20-degree angle, and it quickly turns out a razor edge for almost any kind of knife.
The Chef’sChoice Trizor 15XV is just as reliable, fast, and easy to use as its sibling. It costs a little less, however, so you can sharpen to just one angle: 15 degrees.
The Chef’sChoice 1520 and the Chef’sChoice Trizor 15XV produced the keenest, most consistent edges of all of the knife sharpeners we tested. These two models repeatedly brought Victorinox chef’s knives (our budget pick) from butter-knife dullness back to one-stroke tomato-slicing sharpness. Because of their detailed user manuals and clever design, these models make it virtually impossible to mess up the sharpening process—which is not something every competitor can claim.
Since these sharpeners are both fast and simple to use, it’s easy to keep your knives sharp at all times. The one difference between the two: The 1520 sharpens knives at both a 15-degree and a 20-degree angle, so the 1520 is slightly more versatile than the Trizor 15XV (which sharpens at a 15-degree angle only).
Both models are built to last—each has a strong motor and sturdy construction. (We’ve used the Trizor 15XV in the Wirecutter test kitchen for years.) And though these picks are a bit of an investment, we think they’re both well worth it.
Budget pick
The diminutive Work Sharp Culinary E2 outperformed every other sharpener in its price range, but it’s slower and slightly less effective than our top picks.
If you have less storage space or a smaller budget to work with, we recommend the electric Work Sharp Culinary E2. It’s not nearly as fast or powerful as the Chef’sChoice 1520 or the Chef’sChoice Trizor 15XV, but it’s easy to use and more compact, and it produced a better edge than any other sharpener in its price range. If you don’t mind taking a little longer to sharpen your knives, and your knives are not irretrievably dull, we think this one will give you the best bang for your buck.
