Carrie Honaker, who updated this roundup, is a food writer who has wielded many knives over the years. As a restaurateur and avid home cook, she knows the importance of caring for your knives to maintain steady, sharp edges. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Bon Appetit, Allrecipes, and Wine Enthusiast.

Design: We highlighted sharpeners that featured multiple stages for maximum efficiency or different slots for different blade sizes. Knife sharpeners can be bulky, so we also focused on compact sizes that you could store easily in your kitchen. Effectiveness: The Edge-on-Up tool helped give us an idea of each sharpener's efficiency, but we also tested our knives immediately before and after sharpening to gauge any noticeable differences.According to Blake Hartley, Executive Chef at Lapeer Seafood Market, a sharpening steel removes material from your knife by moving the edge alongside the steel to restore the V-shape of a blunt edge. A honing steel is not used to sharpen but to restore the bent edge so that it's straight again. It really depends on how much you use them and how much abuse they take, but knives generally need sharpening once or twice a year. If a knife feels dull or has trouble cutting, sharpen it. Just note that every time you sharpen a knife, it removes a little bit of metal. After many repetitions, there won't be enough left to sharpen, and it'll be time to replace your knife. Repeat this action three to six times. You can go for three if your blade is just a bit dull, and more if it's blunter. Sharpening a knife blade removes tiny bits of metal, and those will need to be removed from the sharpener once in a while. Many models have a compartment in the bottom to collect metal filings, which you can simply dump into the trash and wipe clean with a wet cloth. (If there's no compartment, turn the unit over and lightly tap to get the filings out.) You can also clean the abrasive parts with a cloth or a soft brush dampened with water; make sure to let everything dry completely before using again. Unless the directions say otherwise, it's not a good idea to use soap or any kind of oil to clean a knife sharpener, as you can damage the abrasive.

Handheld manual knife sharpeners are designed to keep your blade fresh, and you should use them to top up the blade after every few hours of use. An electric knife sharpener or whetstone would be your best bet for a fully dulled knife. A whetstone is much harder to use. To get a good result, you need skill and practice, plus considerable patience. We love Global Knives as the quality of the steel (CROMOVA 18) is fantastic. The steel has the great property of being hard but malleable and sharpens up really well to create a razor-sharp edge. As we work on Global Knives so often, we have sharpened and repaired pretty much every model and type of Global Knife including the Classic, Ni, UKON, and Sai ranges as well as the limited-edition models they produce. We can safely say our Global knife sharpening service is the best and most comprehensive in the UK. A whetstone combined with a honing steel gives the best results (better than knife sharpeners). But (and it's a big but) only use this method if you know what you're doing. Otherwise, you risk damaging the cutting edge of your knife. A honing steel, sometimes also called a honing rod or a sharpening steel, doesn't exactly sharpen your knife. Instead, it realigns the cutting edge to smooth out microscopic bumps and jagged edges.

Keep knives in a covered, safe environment when not in use," says Hartley. "Do a weekly light hone with steel or stone, always wiping away particles with a clean dry towel. Don't feel like you have to work fast—with a process like this, form is everything. Work out the proper form first, and then the speed will come." Can you sharpen kitchen shears with a knife sharpener? Hold the knife at about a 22-degree angle to the stone. 90 degrees is your knife placed on the stone as if you were going to cut through it. Tilt the knife halfway between that and the whetstone and you'll be at 45 degrees. Then tilt it halfway between that and the stone, and you'll be at around the correct angle you need. It doesn’t matter which knives you buy—they'll all need to be sharpened periodically. Besides making it easier to cut and chop, keeping knives sharp is also safer for your fingers: Dull knives can drag or skip while cutting, which can increase your chance of injury. How often you need to use a knife sharpener depends on exactly how often you use the knife, what you cut, and what surface you cut on, but professionals typically recommend sharpening once or twice a year.