Chef'sChoice 15XV EdgeSelect Professional Electric Knife Sharpener with 100-Percent Diamond Abrasives and Precision Angle Guides for Straight Edge and Serrated Knives, 3-Stage, Gray

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.

I knew that the last time I had my knives sharpened it was to a 20 degree angle. The instructions say that the sharpener creates a 15 degree angle and that if you have a 20, you will need to make more passes to establish the new edge.Not sure exactly how many pulls I made on the first slot but I tried to go at the speed the manufacturer recommends. I made at least 5-6 passes then 4-5 on the second slot then honed left and right 3-4 times. My knives are just the way I like them and this machine with pay for itself in not time!

Easy to use (please, read the included instructions) and has completely renovated my 1990s set of Henckel knives to near perfect sharpness in matter of a few minutes. Well worth the expense!

Works very well. Fast delivery

this thing actually works and gets knives very sharp. I have tried all the manual sharpeners in the past and this beats them all. My wife was very happy when she had sharp knives again. It just takes a minute or two to touch up a knife every once in a while. This is not a piece of junk and it does work.

Holy sharp I’ve owned this for 2 years I use it every 3 months to get the perfect sharp blade on my chef and fillet knives. Flawless design can’t mess up sharpening it. Fit in my storage room perfect. Works well strong motor.

Why did you pick this product vs others?:The Chef'sChoice 15XV EdgeSelect Professional Electric Knife Sharpener is exactly what I needed after nearly ruining my kitchen knives with a manual sharpener. Excellent knife sharpener for the home cook.

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.