I recently purchased a Chef’s Choice 1520 AngleSelect Diamond Hone Electric Knife Sharpener because some kitchen knives were flunking the ripe tomato test. Basically, if a knife could not cleanly slice through a ripe tomato, which presents the dual challenge of a moderately tough skin with a mushy interior, then it flunks the ripe tomato test.

Quite a few knives flunked the test. At the top of the tomato photo, some knives were only able to leave an indentation. After I ran my knives through the sharpener, they were all able to slice through the poor tomato. Chef’s Choice certainly had cheaper knife sharpeners available, but I needed the 15/20 feature, which lets it sharpen both Asian knives, like a Santoku, as well as European knives.

The sharpener has six slots: two to hone each side of an Asian-style knife, two to hone each side of an American/European-style knife, and two to polish each side of a knife.