Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am not a chef. I am not a knife connoisseur. I am just a regular guy that loves to cook, have a half dozen knives and like to keep them sharp. My lot consists of a Victorinox Santoku (my most expensive one), a Chicago Cutlery chefs knife that I love because it was mi first knife and it has a very comfortable wooden handle, a serrated bread one probably from Bed bath anb beyond, a smaller IKEA 5" chefs knife for my kids because it is perfect size for their hands and a couple 3" and 4" paring knives I got from my mother in law that have no brand and look very proletariat. Really, that is all the knives I need. I never felt the need for any expensive knives as the ones I have were great...when they were sharp. I do have a steel I use before using the knives, but they were not near where they should have been. I have used flat stones. Found it difficult to keep the angle of the knife consistent and I never got decent results. Searched for a better method and came across the Spyderco system. Got that as it seemed simpler since the angle issue was taking care of. I got better results, but still, not extremely sharp. Looked at videos to see what I was doing wrong, but still could not get good results. Then I read about the Trizor XV in Cooks Illustrated and I thought, hmmm, this looks like the thing for me. So, it arrived today and I spent no time in getting to work on my knives. Love the heft of the apparatus, the functional, yet industrial design and best of all that it did not require me to take lessons from a Nepalese monk on some forsaken mountain on the third full moon of a leap year surrounded by happy goats and a couple oxen to get my knives sharp! Man, this thing simply just works. My knives got REALLY sharp. I was able to find the infamous burr (which I never got with the other methods, even after lighting a few candles to the knife goddess). The directions are simple, the operation is simple, the knives get sharp. What else do any of us mere mortals need? I got some grapes (no tomatoes on hand) that were a bit too soft and was able to cut veeeeeery thin slices without applying any pressure, simply by the weight of the knife. I am sure all the other methods out there are great and do an amazing job, they just don't work for me. As much as I would like to sit in my porch, a piece of straw sticking from my mouth while my hands massage my knife along a stone telling some punk kid in my best Australian accent "that is not a knife, this is a knife!" the reality is that between band practice, basketball practice, dance, Boy Scouts and all the other crap my kids get to do, I just need something a normal human can use and get awesome results in a sort amount of time. If that is you, you should get this thing. It really works very well. The noise is just a humming sound and not loud at all, then again my son is a drummer and I think that is fine too, so. But really, fairly quiet. Just pull on the left, then the right side. After a few times,12 in my first knife, I was able to feel the damn burr. Then unto stage 2, same thing, then stropping stage and voila, damn sharp knife! Like all of you normal people, I was worried about all those comments the master sharpening people out there make about how much steel this things remove. Well, let me tell you that after doing 6 knives, the amount of shavings captured by the magnet were enough to build me a small steel cottage in the country. Seriously now, there were shavings, but what can I say, it will probably take a lifetime of sharpening to make it noticeable on the knives. So take it from this middle age family man and stop wondering if you should get this mechanical, uncomplicated wonder and just do it. You won't be disappointed.