Best Kitchen Knives of 2024

Best Overall Kitchen Knives

Zwilling Professional S 7-Piece Block Set

Included Knives: 8-inch chef's, 5.5-inch prep, 4-inch paring, 8-inch bread | Accessories: Knife block, kitchen shears, steel hone

The versatile Zwilling Professional S 7-Piece is our top choice for a well-balanced overall kitchen knife set. We found it to have the best selection of knives to get any consumer started. Additionally, Zwilling left several empty slots for additional knives so that you can customize this knife set further based on your specific needs. It also has room for six steak knives. We found that all of the included knives are high quality, sharp, durable, and comfortable. The knife block is attractive and looks right at home on any kitchen counter. The all-important chef's knife scored highly in all of our tests, making it a great primary tool in your kitchen. The utility knife has a partial gyuto shape with a larger blade area, which our testers found to be by far the most usable and versatile of this style of knife. The bread knife was one of our favorites we tested. The included hone will keep your knives sharp and feels safe and comfortable to use.

The Zwilling Professional S 7-Piece comes as an incomplete set, with several empty spots for additional knives (see our tip about this below) and a set of steak knives. The chef's knife, while being high quality and extremely sharp, has a particularly steep curve at the end of the blade. This felt awkward at first, but most of our testers were able to adjust their cutting style without too much issue. The chef's knife also does not feature a full bolster. This differs from the traditional German style and is, in large part, purely a preference issue among users. We also found the included kitchen shears to be just average. They performed adequately in our testing but felt cheap compared to the knives. Overall, the Zwilling is a compelling option for anyone in the market for a quality knife set. It has everything to get you started, as well as room for expansion and customization. If you are looking to take a much more customized approach to your kitchen knife set, the Wusthof Classic 6-Piece is another great option. Although we felt there were too many holes it's lineup, the quality of the knives included is unassailable and would be a great starting set for the DIY'er.

Best Upgraded Kitchen Knives

Shun Classic 5 Piece Starter Block

Included Knives: 8-inch chef's, 6-inch utility, 3.5-inch paring | Accessories: Knife block, steel hone

The Shun Classic 5-Piece is an attractive and capable knife set and is our upgrade pick for a premium set. This set contains Shun's chef knife, which we loved so much in our chef knife testing, in addition to a matched paring and utility knife. These knives are the sharpest we tested and held an edge longer than any other in our testing. They were equally as capable of cutting delicate herbs as they were of thick butternut squash. We found all three knives included in this set to be very ergonomic, and all our testers consistently rated them near the top for in-hand comfort. The wonderfully contoured Pakkawood handle and the Damascus pattern on the blades are eye-catching and represent their unique manufacturing process. In short, we found the Shun knives to excel at nearly every task in the kitchen.

Most of our complaints have to do with its utility as a set. Although the knives are undeniably great, it lacks versatility. There are no kitchen shears and no bread knife (although we found that the Shun chef knife was often sharp enough to cut bread even without serrations), and only one extra slot to expand your repertoire. The Shun Classic 5-Piece also has the highest price per knife. That said, we feel that there is still good value given the fantastic quality of the Shun knives. They just don't give all the capabilities that people often think of when buying a knife set. The Shun 5-Piece should be a top choice for anyone looking for the highest-quality knife. Its beauty and performance are sure to attract attention in any kitchen. If you are looking for a more extensive knife selection, the Global 7-Piece Takashi is another great option. These knives offer good cutting feel and blade quality, but they come in a larger set that gives them more versatility.

Best Kitchen Knives on a Budget

Victorinox Classic Cutlery Block 8-Piece

Included Knives: 8-inch chef's, 6-inch boning, 4-inch paring, 8-inch bread, 10-inch slicing | Accessories: Knife block, kitchen shears, steel hone

The Victorinox Classic 8-Piece is our top recommendation for the best budget knife set. It's made by the same company that manufactures the famous Swiss army knife with a reputation for quality at a reasonable price, and this 7-piece set is a shining example of that. These knives are sharp, comfortable, and eminently capable of performing any task in the kitchen. The blades are made of high-carbon stainless steel and employ a unique nylon-formed handle. We found these handles to be very comfortable for the most part and allowed us to always have a firm grip, wet or dry. The blades themselves were sharp, precise, and held their edge reasonably well throughout our testing. As with the Zwilling 7-Piece, the Victorinox 8-Piece set comes with two empty knife slots so you can expand your collection based on your needs. For those who want more, Victorinox also sells a larger 22-piece knife set that includes steak knives.

The Victorinox 8-Piece doesn't come with a utility knife. Instead, it includes a filet and a ten-inch slicing knife. Although a utility knife is more versatile, we feel it's an acceptable trade-off here and doesn't drastically impact usability. Another nitpick would be that the knives don't sit perfectly straight in the block and are noticeably lopsided. This doesn't affect performance at all, but those who care about looks should take note. Our testers also found the handle quality to be inconsistent across the knife set. The nylon handle that was comfortable on the chef knife felt awkward on the smaller paring knife included in the set. If this Victorinox set isn't a good fit for you, we also loved the budget-friendly Mercer Genesis 6-Piece. It combines a similar performance and price with a more traditional rubber handle and an attractive wood and glass knife block. Overall, the performance and price of the Victorinox make it a compelling choice for any consumer on a budget who still needs good-quality knives.

Best Budget Kitchen Knives that Includes Steak Knives

Henckels International Statement 12 Piece

Included Knives: 8-inch chef's, 7-inch santoku, 3-inch paring, 8-inch bread, six 4.5-inch steak | Accessories: Knife block, steel hone

The Henckels Statement 12-Piece is our second kitchen knives budget pick for those who want a set that includes steak knives. We found this set to be a great value for those who want to buy a knife set that includes quality knives and a set of steak knives. We've found that Henckels tends to make very good value knives that perform well — which is definitely the case here. Each knife's cutting performance was good and by far the best in its price range. The steak knives that were included were a tester's favorite, as we found them to be sharp enough to cut through any sort of meat while still being delicate enough not to feel out of place at the holiday dining table. It includes a great assortment of knives for nearly any task.

On the negative side, we found the handles to feel a bit clumsy. Although we wouldn't call them uncomfortable per se, they have a very unfinished feel and are distinctly utilitarian. The detailed finishing of the set was also second-tier. We found many small blemishes and imperfections that, while they wouldn't detract from their ability to prepare food, definitely make them stand out in a less attractive way. The Henkels 12-Piece also lacks a set of kitchen shears or even a place for one in the block. Despite its minor drawbacks, the Henckels is a great choice for anyone who wants a reasonably priced kitchen knife set that delivers nearly all the tools needed for their kitchen in one go. Another option that includes a set of steak knives would be the Chicago Cultery Fusion 17-Piece. Although their cutting performance isn't quite on par with the Henckels, they still performed fairly well in our tests, and we found them to be pretty comfortable in hand. Additionally, the Chicago 17-Piece came with more steak knives than the Henckels, as well as a filet knife.

Compare Products

Compare select up to 5 products to compare

	Score	Product	Price
	90	Zwilling Professional S 7-Piece Block Set Best Overall Kitchen Knives	$429
	86	Global 7 Piece Takashi	$600
	85	Shun Classic 5 Piece Starter Block Best Upgraded Kitchen Knives	$595
	83	Victorinox Classic Cutlery Block 8-Piece Best Kitchen Knives on a Budget	$255
	78	Wusthof Classic 6-Piece Starter Block	$485
	73	Mercer Culinary Genesis 6 Piece Forged	$182
	71	Henckels International Statement 12 Piece Best Budget Kitchen Knives that Includes Steak Knives	$120
	68	Chicago Cutlery Fusion 17 Piece	$140
	59	Ginsu Gourmet 8 Piece	$110
	53	Cuisinart 15 Piece Stainless Steel	$80
	48	McCook Stainless Steel 15 Piece	$130
	40	Amazon Basics 14 Piece	$36

How We Tested Kitchen Knives

We've been testing kitchen knives since 2020, and with every update, our process begins with research to find out what are the best, the most popular, and the most interesting kitchen knives on the market. We dug deep to find what others were saying about their performance and which features are essential to a good knife. We selected the top sets and purchased them all at market price, then got to work cutting, chopping, slicing, dicing, and you better believe — eating! With this latest update, we headed back to the kitchen to conduct new side-by-side tests on the original lineup and some sharp new contenders (pun intended). We cut pounds upon pounds of food to test sharpness and precision, closely examined craftsmanship and quality, found balance points, assessed handle ergonomics, and even considered the style and function of each storage block. Never one to believe what we're told, we then took them to our lab to confirm many their specific details including steel hardness (HRC), blade sharpness, and chef knife blade angles. Finally, we combined all the data we gathered and selected the best options available to bring you the ideal kitchen knives for your cooking, serving, and eating styles.

Our testing of kitchen knife sets is divided into four mutually exclusive testing metrics:

• Practicality and Set Utility (30% of overall score weighting)

• Cutting Performance (30% weighting)

• Ergonomics (25% weighting)

• Build Quality (15% weighting)

Why Trust GearLab

Our testing of kitchen knives is led by Review Editor, Bradley Nichols, who has always loved finding and making delicious foods. Brad is curious by nature, spending large amounts of time asking questions and researching answers and methodologies. Combined with his passion for traveling and trying new things, his kitchen is often full of the smells of experimental dishes bubbling away on the stovetop and baking in the oven. Over the decades, Brad has become the chef for all family gatherings and get-togethers with friends, and his advice on what kitchen gadgets are worth buying is sought by everyone in his social circle. Whether he's perfecting his brownie recipe or sous viding steak for the holidays, Brad is always tinkering in the kitchen and sets a high bar for all his implements and tools. It's this level of scrutiny that he applies to his kitchen knife testing, putting every set of knives through a battery of tests and in a wide variety of other people's hands to learn which is the right set for your home.

Analysis and Test Results

We tested each kitchen knife set with a series of carefully constructed tests evaluating four mutually exclusive metrics. These tests were designed to give an overall score based on a combination of practicality, utility, comfort, and value. In the following section, we will break down the specific metrics and tests and discuss the details of how each set performed.

What's the Best Value?

As we tested these knife sets, we found that there was a strong correlation between price and performance. In essence, more dollars per knife spent will generally get you better quality knives. The higher-end knives started sharper and required much less frequent sharpening. The less expensive sets tended to contain many more knives, but we found them to very often be of low quality.

The Global 7-Piece Takashi is one of our favorite overall sets. The knives we tested were beautiful, made with quality, and amazingly sharp. However, the price of this set varies far too much for us to give them a firm recommendation. However, if you are willing to wait on a good sale, they are worth picking up. The Victorinox Classic 8-Piece is also a standout for value, although this was no surprise given the brand's reputation. If you can deal with the sub-par looks, they will get you the most knife for your money.

The Mercer Genesis 6-Piece is another set that we loved. It surprised us with how high quality it felt, and it even comes with a unique-looking knife block style. It scored just below the Victorinox 8-Piece in that particular price range, but if you want a beautiful glass knife block on your countertop, it's worth considering.

Practicality and Set Utility

What makes a good kitchen knife set? You need a variety of different tools to complete most kitchen tasks comfortably. Of course, a good chef's knife is the starting point, but adding a few more tools will make cooking in your kitchen much more enjoyable. This metric is our most subjective rating, but we will walk through our logic so that you can make your own judgment on knife selection.

We judged each set by their selection of tools included. A low score here doesn't mean that the knives are low quality, but that the set may not include all the tools needed in the average home kitchen and may require supplementary purchases. What we look for are these core items that can handle almost any job you'll want to accomplish at home:

• Chef Knife — A proper chef knife is almost a must-have for any knife set. This is the first knife most people reach for and a jack-of-all-trades in the kitchen.

• Paring Knife — A small, 3-4 inch blade that is perfect for delicate tasks like coring a tomato or cutting the top off of a strawberry. Ideal for cutting things held in your hand.

• Utility Knife — A utility knife is larger than a paring but smaller than a chef. Useful when you need more finesse. Also, it is great as a spare knife when you have helpers in the kitchen.

• Bread Knife — A long (8-10 inches) serrated knife used primarily to cut bread products. The large teeth along the blade help to cut cleanly through everything from a hard, crusty load to a soft white bread.

• Kitchen Shears — Used for everything from cutting sheets of parchment to cutting through ribs on a chicken carcass.

• Hone — Indespensible in the kitchen, and used to keep your blades sharp and safe.

Other knives, such as a filet, tourné, or slicing knife, are useful to have but very situational, specific, and not useful for all home chefs. Steak knives are another popular addition to many sets, which we, of course, tested with a classic steak dinner for the whole family.

Using this as a guide, we found that the Zwilling Professional S 7-Piece contained exactly what we wanted in a kitchen knife set. Seven pieces, giving you just what you need with no extraneous knives and still leaving room for expansion with extra slots. The Victorinox Classic 8-Piece also contains all these pieces as well as a filet knife.

The Henckels 12-Piece has an excellent selection, swapping a santoku for a utility but lacking kitchen shears. The Global 7-Piece Takashi also has a great selection, again only lacking kitchen shears but adding a santoku.

The Shun 5-Piece contains three of our favorite knives from this test as well as a hone, but it lacks kitchen shears and a bread knife. The Mercer Genesis 6-Piece contains every knife we wanted to see but, surprisingly, is missing a hone and kitchen shears. Chicago Cutlery 17-Piece includes a good selection that we liked, including all the basics and a few extras, such as a whopping eight steak knives.

Some larger sets, such as the McCook 15-Piece and Cuisinart 15-Piece, come with multiple extra knives such as slicing, tourné, and santoku. Although we appreciate having options, we found having too many knives dilutes the quality of the set and adds extra maintenance and cleaning that we did not like.

Cutting Performance

A knife just isn't a knife unless it's sharp and can cut what you want it to. We have a battery of tests that measure the sharpness and resiliency of these knives. We start by slicing a fresh tomato as thinly as we can. One of the best tests for any knife as it can be a challenging fruit to cut cleanly. Then we put the knives through the wringer, slicing onions, potatoes, peppers, and citrus. We challenge them with large and small cuts, delicate jobs, and heavy-duty ones. Then, we go back to the tomato and find out how well the knife has held an edge and how much it deteriorated.

The Shun 5-Piece knives excelled here, winning top marks for their razor-sharp edge and ability to create Michelin-level precision. Close behind it were the Whustof 6-Piece and the Global 7-Piece. They are very different sets of kitchen knives, with the former being an excellent German style and the latter a lightweight Japanese set, but they both proved to have excellent cutting performance and precision.

The Zwilling 7-Piece and Victorinox 8-Piece were just behind those sets, delivering excellent overall cutting performance, but finding the edges didn't last quite as long as the above. The Mercer 6-Piece rated highly as well. Just below the Victorinox but still a very sharp set of knives.

We also ran separate tests for serrated blades. We tested their ability to cut bread, both hard crusty loaves as well as a tender croissant. Some sets lacked a full bread knife and only included a small serrated utility knife — and we tested those, too. Although situationally useful for cutting things like tomatoes, we found them much less suitable for cutting bread products.

We found the Zwilling Professional S and Global Takashi to be our favorite bread knives from the sets that we tested. They were sharp, with clean looks and impeccable performance. They had slightly offset blades to aid hand position in cutting, and the serrations cut easily through both the hard and soft pieces of bread we threw at them.

The Victorinox Classic and Henckels International Statement also had excellent bread knives. We found them to be sharp and very capable of making the slices we asked of them. However, they had a more traditional straight-blade shape and lacked anything that wowed us. The Mercer Genesis and Chicago Cutlery Fusion bread knives were a bit more average, still. They proved able to slice through bread as easily, but we found the cuts to be coarser by a small margin.

Ergonomics

Is each knife comfortable in many different sizes and shapes of hands? Can it be used for prolonged periods of time without blistering your hands? As these are very important aspects of your longterm happiness while using kitchen knives, we sought to answer these questions through our comprehensive, crowd-sourced ergonomics testing.

We tested every knife in each of these sets by having a variety of people of different sizes, shapes, and skill levels cut produce in our kitchen and rate the knives against each other to find which were the most comfortable overall.

The Shun Classic set stands out again as one of the most consistently comfortable and ergonomic knives we tested. Its deceptively simple-looking Pakkawood handle fits very comfortably in your hand. We found that among our testers, there were no complaints, and several picked it as their favorite.

The Zwilling Professional S and Wusthof Classic also have very ergonomic handles and are both great examples of German-style knives. They are heavy blades but exceptionally well balanced, and almost everyone said the weight felt good in their hand and aided the cutting motion. They also tend to make knives with full and half bolsters, giving you the opportunity to purchase the shape you like the best.

The Chicago Cutlery Fusion set gets some recognition here. Despite its shortcomings, we found these knives to be some of the most comfortable we tested. We found the Global Takashi knives to be well-balanced and easy to hold in most hands. Although odd at first and very lightweight, most testers grew to appreciate their svelte cutting motion.

Build Quality

Looking at the build quality was the first and last test we did with every knife. We began by inspecting each set for flaws in the manufacturing process or other blemishes. Next, we took two blades from each set — the chef and paring — and performed the paper cut test. Here, we took a single sheet of paper, held it at the top, and drew the knife down through it. We noted if and how well each knife could slice through it.

Finally, after the entire testing process, we inspected each set again to see how well it held up to the wear and tear we put it through, noting any damage that appeared. We also took every one of these kitchen knives to our lab to confirm the specifications manufacturers claimed about them, including their steel hardness (HRC) and the sharpness and blade angle of every set's chef knife.

The Shun Classic set stands apart in build quality. We found the machining to be immaculate on all of the blades. The Zwilling Professional S, Wusthof Classic, and Global Takashi were up there as well, being made practically flawlessly and coming out of the box with perfect edges.

The Victorinox Classic, Henckels International Statement, and Mercer Genesis were all very well made, but with some small flaws that made them look and feel less finished or refined. That said, we didn't feel this adversely affected their overall performance.

Conclusion

Choosing a knife set for your home can be daunting. With the array of configurations and options available on the market today, everybody will have their own personal sweet spot. We hope our article helps you make a decision that will keep you and your loved ones fed for years to come.