VALUE FOR MONEY: KNIFE SHARPENERS

Tested by Conor Pope

Excellent ***** Great **** Fine *** Below par ** Awful *

Taylor’s Eye Witness Chantry Modern Knife Sharpener, €53

Highs: This Sheffield made sharpener is a low-fuss, high-quality option that requires no lessons or electricity to get up and sharpening. It is finished with very shiny chrome and weighs just short of a kilo. It will, the makers assure us, reproduce the action of a butcher's steel, ensuring the correct edge angle is applied to the blade. It turned a blunt knife into one which could have removed the top of a Pricewatch finger in less than 15 seconds and because it is a recognisable brand, replacing the steel bars when they eventually wear out should not be too difficult.

Lows: The shiny chrome looks good but will need constant polishing to stop it looking very grubby very quickly. While it is good, it is expensive, and there are fairly similar brands on the market for a lot less.

Verdict: Does the job but at a price

Star rating: ***

Sabatier Sharpening Steel, €41

Highs: If you want to create the impression you're something of a culinary whiz without actually cooking, this is the instrument to whip out in front of an audience. When wielded properly, it sharpens very quickly and easily and is impressively old school.

Lows: But you'd really want to know what you're doing – when buying this, the worried shop assistant asked Pricewatch if we knew how to use it, and when we answered in the negative, she strongly advised us against buying it. We agreed to find ourselves a butcher to instruct us – instead we found dozens of instructive YouTube clips willing to do the needful – and she agreed to sell it to us. And we can see why you'd need some class of lesson – use it the wrong way and you can at best scratch the sides of the blade or dull the blade, and at worst separate yourself from body parts.

Verdict: Tricky but good

Star rating: ***

Ozitech Diamond Fingers Knife Sharpener, €14.95

Highs: We found this Australian-made sharpener on iwantoneofthose.com, and even when delivery charges were factored in, it still worked out comparatively cheaply. It comes in a little plastic case which opens to reveal eight springy metal "fingers" which you pull the blade through – apparently, the springiness coupled with the angle of the metal fingers replicates the swipe a chef makes across a traditional honing steel. It certainly sharpens well and quickly and was impressively compact when folded away.

Lows: When compared with some of the more expensive, sturdier options, we couldn't help thinking it looked a little cheap, and the parts can not be replaced. It is not suitable for serrated edges and may be hard for many to track down.

Verdict: Cheap and functional

Star rating: ****

Tesco Soft Grip Knife and Scissors sharpener €1.95

Highs: This was ridiculously cheap – more than over 60 times cheaper than the most expensive option we tried, in fact. It is very lightweight and comes with sharpening steels and a small sharpening stone which would, we imagine, be useful when bringing an edge to craft knives and the like. It also promises to sharpen our scissors too, making it, theoretically at least, the most versatile option we reviewed.

Lows: There is a reason it is so cheap – it is pretty rubbish when it comes to delivering sharp edges. We tried it with a number of knives and at least one scissors but struggled to tell the difference between the "before" and "after" blades. It is very flimsy looking, and we'd be pretty certain it won't have a long and productive life ahead of it.

Verdict: Cheap, but still not worth it

Star rating: **

Firestone Electric Knife Sharpener €134

Highs: If Pricewatch were ever to go into the knife-sharpening business, then this is undoubtedly the option we'd go for every time. It is a serious piece of kitchen kit, and when we ran our knives through the furiously rotating ceramic wheels, there was dust and sparks and everything. It can hone serrated blades as well as straight edged ones and undoubtedly sharpened more effectively than any of the competition. By the end of the process we reckoned we could have shaved with the sharpened knives.

Lows: Oh, but the price – it is horrendously expensive and at the cost is impossible for the casual knife sharpener to justify. It is loud enough to repeatedly startle young children and takes up space in your kitchen.

Verdict: Razor sharp, but a bit of an investment

Star rating: ****