Chef’s Choice knife sharpeners are made by the EdgeCraft Corporation out of Avondale, Pennsylvania.
See the Chef’s Choice 220 Hybrid Diamond Hone Knife Sharpener at Amazon. They make a variety of equipment for home and commercial kitchens aside from their line of knife sharpeners, including cutlery, food slicers, waffle makers, and hot beverage appliances. They were founded in 1984 and right out of the gates, EdgeCraft released the Chef’s Choice line of electric sharpeners and have remained a powerhouse in the electric knife sharpening arena.
Chef’s Choice 220 Hybrid Diamond Hone Knife Sharpener
This review will focus on one of the entry-level electric knife sharpeners on the market, the Chef’s Choice 220 Hybrid Diamond Hone Knife Sharpener. This sharpener is targeted at casual home chefs or outdoorsmen/outdoorswomen. This sharpener has two stages: Stage 1 with 100% diamond coated disks and is electrically powered. Stage 2 is manual and is for honing. This sharpener has the capability to sharpen standard, straight-edged knives as well as serrated knives, like bread knives or some steak knives. This final stage guarantees a finely honed sharpness for your knives.
See the Chef’s Choice 220 Hybrid Diamond Hone Knife Sharpener at Amazon
It is important to use the right stage for the sharpening job.
Stage 1 is the coarsest of the two stages and should be used for dull blades when a new edge needs to be created. This actually does remove some metal from the knife blade but that is a fact of life when sharpening blades. You cannot obtain a like-new cutting edge without removing some metal. This sharpener is not ideal for sharpening knives that have been damaged or are significantly dull.
That is to say that Stage 1 is not as coarse as other sharpeners like the Wusthof 3 Stage Electric Knife Sharpener or the Chef’s Choice 120 Diamond Hone 3-Stage Professional Knife Sharpener which can sharpen very dull knives.
So keep this fact in mind when you choose your sharpener.
The Chef’s Choice 220 Hybrid Knife Sharpener has the capability to sharpen serrated knives and Stage 2 should be used for this task. This will realign and straighten all your serrated knives. Stage 2 will also sharpen each of the serrated tips on your knife blade. However, since Stage 2 is the stropping/polishing it is worth noting that I believe you will not be able to sharpen a very dull or damaged serrated knife. Please keep this in mind when selecting a sharpener. In the case of a very dull or damaged serrated knife blade, I would recommend a manual sharpening system like the KME KFS Knife Sharpening System.
Chef’s Choice 220 Hybrid Diamond Hone Knife Sharpener is highly versatile and can handle any sharpening task for high-quality gourmet knives, butchering knives, sporting knives, pocket knives, survival knives, and serrated knives.
Learn about how to sharpen serrated knives.
For butcher knives, pocket knives, sporting knives, and, survival knives, I would recommend using Stage 1 only many cases. The slightly coarser grit and grind that is provided by Stage 1 can make the blades have a better “bite” which can be helpful depending on the task.
This sharpener provides your blades with a 20° angle which is ideal for a wide range of blades and a very good compromise for a person with many different kinds of knives on a tight budget.
Pros and Cons:
Reviews from Amazon favor this sharpener with most customers being happy with the results.
Saving time is a benefit that popped up over and over during my research.
Although sharpening very dull knives does take more passes through the sharpener than expected and that the sharpener does an OK job between professional sharpenings.
