Bangkok Bill

25 de agosto de 2014

Possibly the best purchase you'll ever make

If you own lots of expensive knives, you need this machine. The more you own, the more you need it. If you have invested a decent amount of money in knives, it's a good bet you did that not just for how nice they look, but for how sharp they are.Consider how much their value diminishes with a dull or even slightly dull edge. Most people don't even know what sharp is. After the initial factory edge wares off, they never feel that super clean slice of a tomato again. That's why some people buy serrated knives, to cut tomatoes. That's crazy because serrated knives really don't cut well and a razor sharp knife does, they just can't get back to that razor sharp edge, not on their own.No matter how much I tried, I could never duplicate that factory fresh edge for myself. I didn't have the skill to pull it off, even if I had all the tools for sharpening, the steel, the crock sticks, the wet stones, I tried but failed to shave hair with my kitchen knives.That was until I bought my first Chef'sChoice model 120. Instantly I became an expert sharpener and found myself offering to sharpen any of my friends and family's knives too because I hated seeing them struggle with dull knives. If you cook, and you like quality gear, like sharp knives, then you have a real treat coming.This is one of the best things you will ever buy. It's half the price of one good knife but it will keep all your knives razor sharp.Once you have the shape of the edge down with the first wheel or two, all you need is the last wheel on the right to touch it up once in awhile and from then on, that's probably the only wheel you will need to use on your knife. Good knives only need sharpening once or twice a year. The key is using a great quality blade with a decent cutting board like wood or soft plastic and stay away from cutting into bones except with your one and only boning knife. Fish bones are no big deal but the other types can mess up a nice edge fast. Also, keep the uneducated away from expensive, sharp knives, give them something else to use. This is very important because it only takes about 3 seconds to ruin the edge on a good blade.I have owned the Chef'sChoice model 120 for about 12 years and love it. I bought this 15 Trizor XV for my Japanese knives. They come with a 16 degree edge so this model is better for them. I have changed all my kitchen knives over to 15 degrees now and I like it even better than the original 20-22 degree German edge. It makes a big, very noticeable difference when slicing just about everything. I keep my folding pocket knives at 20 degrees because they need to hold up to much tuffer chores working outdoors.Some people claim that a machine like this can't produce the ultimate sharpness of large Japanese wet stones and 15-30 minutes of sharpening. That may be true. It's a totally different approach to the task at hand. I believe I can get a more perfect, slightly sharper edge if I took 30 minutes per blade and slowly stroked the edge to sheer perfection of wet stone treatment. Sometimes, when I have nothing to do, I still like to play around with wet stones but 99% of the time, I don't find it worth it. I can get such a sharp edge in about 5 seconds with the Chef'sChoice machines that it's not even close to deciding witch system I'll use almost all the time. Comparing the two very different techniques is comparing apples to oranges. One way is results in a near perfect edge in less then 10 seconds and the other maybe gets you a slightly sharper edge but maybe not, but it will take several minutes maybe 15 or more to get similar results as I can get with the Chef'sChoice system.Don't listen to reviews that say this will ruin you blades. It won't. No more than any system will. It's all up to you. Do you want to read the manual for five minutes so you learn how to use this thing or just wing it. It has the power and the discs to destroy a blade in seconds if you don't know what you are doing. But, It's so easy, a child can use this thing. You just need to take a minute at first so you know exactly what to do. Practice with cheap knives first and get your skill level up to the job. Once you do that, your good forever but like anything, if you want to pay attention and get really good at it, you can always improve what you're doing.Once you have your edge right, the only disc you need to use is the last one on the right. It is like super fine, basically polishing the edge to super sharpness. It's almost all I ever use and if you wanted to, you could run you very best knives through that last disc every day, without any significant ware to your blade.Knife sharpening is mostly about consistent angle and nothing provides fast sharpening with a consistent angle than Chef'sChoice.I told you it will be the best thing you ever bought. That applies only if you really, really care about quality gear, sharp knives and the ability to always have razor sharpness to your expensive knives. Once you learn how to use this, and it won't take but a few minutes, you'll love it. The more quality knives you own, the more you will appreciate a device like this. It's so easy and so fast, the price is like nothing because it will restore all your expensive blades and probably outlast you. My first model 120 is right here working fine after a dozen years, but this new 15 Trizor is even better, faster and it's the exact same price I paid over a decade ago for my 120.Good luck.Ver más

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M S

Suspiciously packaged EDIT: But it's worth it

Product arrived in a clear plastic bag packed inside a box. Instructions were inside but it appears this was a returned item someone just repackaged. I have no idea if it was returned because it was defective, worked poorly, was damaged, or if why it was shipped in this fashion.EDIT. I've since used the sharpener repeatedly and have upgraded my rating from 2 to 4. I can't give it a 5 due to the unprofessional and ugly manner in which it was packaged. I would think many customers, like myself, prefer to have the original box in which the item was shipped for storage purposes.As to the performance of the product, it works very well. As someone who has spent hundreds of dollars on sharpening stones, watched numerous tutorials on how to use said stones, and after many hours of laboriously sharpening knives with those stones, this product really is remarkable. I don't think you get quite the perfect edge and sharpness that you do with a series of sharpening stones, but it is close enough. The main thing is that it takes about 10-15 minutes rather than 30-45 of sharpening stone effort.Reading the manual is key. Helen Rennie has a recent very good video on using this as well (which is what actually led me to originally purchase this product). In my experience and with my chef's knives, neither the manual nor Ms. Rennie's instructions accurately captured the amount of time it took to get a burr on my knives. It took significantly longer than a few pulls. To be fair, however, I may have incorrectly assumed that my knives were stage/slot 2 ready when in fact they were dull enough to start in stage/slot 1.Using this product I sharpened four chef's knives and two 6" utility knives in about two hours total over the course of two days. That time included stopping to check for a burr and time stopping to test the desired sharpness using a newspaper. if I only needed to sharpen a single chef's knife I would say it would probably have taken about 20 minutes. The great thing is that they are acceptably sharp for someone that needs to have extremely sharp knives for kitchen work, and I also know that resharpening them will now take significantly less time than before. As always, liberal use of a honing rod makes a tremendous amount of difference between sharpening sessions.So if you have wondered if it was worth it--and especially if you have a set of sharpening stones sitting around but don't use them because you just don't have the time or the desire to deal with the effort and watery, slurry mess--I would get this. Read the manual carefully, watch Rennie's video (or any number of them out there) and I think you'll be happy with it.

Cray Grey

13 de mayo de 2026

Easy to use, resulting in very sharp knives for the effort

I've kept our kitchen knifes sharp for quite a while now with a Lansky kit that has stones of various grades with rods and a guide that controls the angle. It's worked ok, but the oil started going for the glue that bonds the stones to their plastic guides, and they've all fallen out at one point or another and have had to be stuck back in.On top of that, our kids are older and want to cook more, and they're not necessarily the gentlest with the tools. The knives we let them use (an old Henckels set that we bought when we moved in together mumblemumble years ago) have seen some abuse, and their edges tend to get chipped. It's fixable with the Lansky set, but it takes effort, and I'm past the point where I can be bothered.I've been toying with the notion of one of these sharpeners for a while, and a recent coupon sealed the deal. I liked the notion of the 3-bevel edge that this model puts on the blade and I don't need to sharpen my utility knives often enough to a 20° angle that I need a sharpener for those, so I picked the 15XV instead of the likes of a 1520.First impression out of the box was that it's smaller than I'd expected. That's fine, given nobody ever has enough cupboard space.I looked over the instructions, and then decided to start with knife that was in the worst state, a 5.5" paring knife that had enough nicks in the blade that it was tending to tear instead of cut. The sharpener made repairing the edge easy.The instructions indicate that you run each stage until there's a consistent burr along the length of the knife, and that a lot of passes may be needed when first converting the profile of an existing knife, or to deal with damage. It took about 10 passes through the first stage to get rid of all the nicks, but it did so, and with a lot less effort than with the Lansky kit.Stage 2 goes the same way - a few passes on each side until there's a consistent burr, and then on to the third step to remove the burr and hone the edge.I honestly hadn't expected too much given how old these knives are, but for the amount of effort to both repair and sharpen the edge, it turned out startlingly sharp. It was able to cut through a supermarket receipt being held in the air from one side.Given how simple this was to use, that seems unreasonably sharp compared to the amount of time needed to do it manually. We'll see whether the claims of the 3-angle edge holding up over time are true, but given resharpening will now take seconds, that might not even matter to me.Definitely not cheap, but a huge timesaver.

Rodney K

7 de julio de 2026

Great but only for knives and nothing else.

It works good after some practice. Puts a sharp edge but I dot know for how long. First attempt I nearly destroyed my knife. It was duller than when I started. Now after practice it sharpens my knives with very little effort. I just don't know how long the edge remains and how fast it may grind down my knives over time. Wish it would sharpen other things.Ver más

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Chewbanx

25 de febrero de 2026

The First Sharpener That Made Every Kitchen Knife Usable Again

I waited a couple weeks before reviewing because knife sharpeners always impress on day one — the real question is whether they actually make cooking easier. This one does.For context: we cook a lot. I’m a foodie and my husband has been an executive chef for 20+ years, so our knives get daily, real-world use — not occasional meal prep. Over the years we’ve owned honing steels, whetstones, pull-through sharpeners, and at least a handful of electric models across price points. Most either took forever, required skill to get consistent results, or made a ton of noise and metal dust.This sharpener stood out immediately. It’s noticeably quieter than others we’ve tried and, more importantly, consistent. We ran our full home knife set through it (chef knives, utility, paring) and in about 20 minutes everything was uniformly sharp — “paper test” sharp, *actually useful in the kitchen* sharp.The moment that sold me: I sliced a crusty loaf of bread using a standard filet knife because it was within reach. It went straight through cleanly. That normally requires hunting down a serrated knife in our drawer.I also appreciate that this model has been vouched for by America’s Test Kitchen across different years — after using it, I understand why. It’s fast and repeatable, which matters more than novelty.Cons: it is fairly large on the counter. This isn’t a drawer gadget. That said, it feels solid and like a long-term tool rather than an appliance you replace every year.Best for: households that cook regularly and want reliable sharp knives without mastering whetstones.Not ideal for: minimal cooks or people tight on counter/storage space.After two weeks of daily use, this is the first sharpener we’ve owned that actually changed how often we reach for certain knives — because they’re all usable now.Ver más

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S M

Works excellently, but more importantly, easy to use

This unit is absolutely worth the money. I have tons of kitchen knives and reshaping and sharpening edges manually is time consuming, exhausting, and can produce inconsistent results without perfect technique...the 15XV makes it quick and almost effortless.For my initial test, I took a 15+ year old cheap chef’s knife that was almost completely dull, see in the pictures how it wasn’t able to pierce a wilted sweet pepper with a lot of pressure and was also completely unable to slice.As per the instructions, I spent a few minutes doing repeated (20+) pulls through stage 1 to reprofile to 15 degrees and create a burr, then 2 pulls through stage 2, and 5 pulls through stage 3, the last two quicker to finish the edge.You can see in the pictures that same old cheap knife now effortlessly glided through the same pepper. I’m sure with a bit more practice on the machine I’ll be able to improve my technique and get even better results, but keep in mind this was my absolute first attempt, on an extremely cheap, old, and very damaged piece, and the finished edge was still very good and absolutely made the knife more than usable again.If you have kitchen knives you put through the paces, this is absolutely worth the investment in my opinion. The unit is simple to operate, relatively quiet, is built well, and has enough weight to remain stable in use.Lastly, read the instructions. They provide clear and easy to follow info on how to properly use the sharpener for different knife types and how to achieve the desired results for different applications, along with directions for eventual maintenance.Very happy with the decision to go with this.Ver más

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