---
title: 'Testing The Highest Rated Chefs Knifes On Amazon - NOT What I Expected!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=_EDjDkeeXwg'
video_id: '_EDjDkeeXwg'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 1168
---

# Testing The Highest Rated Chefs Knifes On Amazon - NOT What I Expected!

> Source: [Testing The Highest Rated Chefs Knifes On Amazon - NOT What I Expected!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_EDjDkeeXwg)

## Summary

The video tests seven highly-rated chef's knives from Amazon, ranging from $19 to $300, using objective tests (hardness, geometry, toughness, edge retention, sharpenability) and subjective real-world use. The goal is to determine which knives are actually good and which are overhyped, revealing that thin geometry and steel quality matter more than review counts or price.

### Key Points

- **Knife lineup** [1:33] — The reviewer bought seven knives: Mercer ($19, 43k reviews), Imarco ($30, 16k reviews), Babish ($27, 10k reviews), Woof ($170), Moss Fiata ($44, 17k reviews), Shanzoo ($70), and a custom Edge Knife Works blade ($300).
- **Hardness testing results** [2:39] — Hardness (HRC) was tested: Edge Knife Works (63), Shanzoo (60), Woof (57.5), Moss Fiata (55.8), Babish (55.2), Imarco (56.5), Mercer (54.5). Harder steel generally performs better.
- **Out-of-box sharpness** [3:52] — Sharpness out of the box: Edge Knife Works was sharpest, followed by Shanzoo and Woof tied for second. Mercer was the dullest.
- **Geometry measurements** [4:49] — Behind-the-edge thickness (geometry): Edge Knife Works, Shanzoo, and Babish were thinnest (≤10 thousandths). Woof was thick (15 thousandths). Budget knives were very thick (19 thousandths).
- **Toughness test results** [6:09] — Brass rod toughness test: Edge Knife Works had minimal damage. Shanzoo performed well. Woof was third but disappointing for its price. Imarco had severe damage.
- **Edge retention results** [11:39] — Edge retention (cardboard cut until fishing line bite test failed): Edge Knife Works (240 inches), Shanzoo (176 inches), Woof (112 inches), budget knives (16 inches each).
- **Sharpenability test** [13:16] — Sharpenability: Higher-end knives (Edge Knife Works, Shanzoo, Woof) sharpened faster and more easily than budget knives, which required more burr removal.
- **Real-world cutting experience** [14:56] — Subjective real-world use: Edge Knife Works scored 90/100. Shanzoo was best value. Babish surprised with good cutting due to thin geometry. Woof was disappointing due to thick geometry. Moss Fiata had excellent food release. Mercer and Imarco were barely better than dollar-store knives.
- **Final combined results** [18:22] — Final ranking: 1) Edge Knife Works ($300), 2) Shanzoo ($70), 3) Babish ($27), 4) Moss Fiata ($44), 5) Woof ($170), 6) Imarco ($30), 7) Mercer ($19).

## Transcript

I bought a bunch of the highest rated
shift knives on Amazon to see if they're
actually good knives or just cheap
garbage regardless of the positive
review count. We're going to do this by
testing a knife specs as well as their
performance with edge retention testing,
toughness testing, and real world usage.
I'm also throwing in a $300 custom and a
$170 Woo stuff for comparison purposes.
Which one of these knives is the best
overall knife? And which one is the best
value? The answer may surprise you.
Oh man, like it's not even close. But
first, this is not your typical YouTube
chef's knife review. We need to get
something out of the way. I don't care
about the manufacturer's specs or the
knife styles. Choosing a knife based off
of the manufacturer's specs or style is
kind of like taste testing based off of
reading the ingredients on the packaging
or recipe. It depends on how well these
ingredients are put together that
actually matters. Now, taste testing in
the knife world would include things
like hardness testing, geometry, edge
retention, sharpenability, or how well
the knife resharpens after use, how well
the knife actually feels to use, and
most importantly, how the knife cuts. I
also asked another opinion on what
should be the most important part of
this review. So, I asked a fellow
YouTube knife reviewer, Erica from
Erica's EDC, what she thought was the
most important. Like at the end of the
day, the knife is meant to cut things.
For me, the most important thing is that
it cuts and it's comfortable in your
hand.
>> So, does it cut?
>> As well as many more questions answered.
But first, what knives are we testing?
First, in no particular order, is the
Mercer Culinary 8-in chef's knife for
about 19 bucks with about 43,000
reviews. Next, we have the Imarco 8-in
chef's knife for about 30 bucks with
over 16,000 reviews. Next, we have the
Babish 8-in chef's knife for about 27
bucks with over 10,000 reviews. Next, we
have the Woof 8-in chef's knife for
about 170 bucks. This is a little lower
on the review count, but still a very
popular high-end chef's knife. Next is
the Moss Fiata, or however you say that,
8-in chef's knife for about 44 bucks and
over 17,000 reviews. Next is the Shanzoo
8-in chef's knife for about 70 bucks.
This is a lesserk known knife, but it
did very well in one of my previous
reviews, so I included it in this test.
And last, but not least is a custom from
Edge Knife Works for about 300 bucks. I
did pay for all of these with my own
money for this review, except for the
custom, which was given to me to mess
around with for demonstrations like
these. And here's a quick and easy way
to visualize the difference in price
between the knives that we're testing
today.
I tested all of these knives on my
Rockwell hardness tester. Steel hardness
is a major contributor to the knife apex
toughness and edge retention. Something
I'll show here in a minute. To simplify
this majorly, harder is generally better
in all cases, especially when it comes
to lower strength applications like
chef's knives. Even though hardness is
super important, it's not everything.
And I'll leave a link to a video I did a
couple of years ago explaining this.
Now, we have a lot going on here in some
of these graphics, but I will give an
overview in the end of this video
showing all of this at once. Now, a lot
of these knives were better than I
expected on the HRC testing. However,
most of our more super budget options
are grouped pretty close together in the
mid50 HRC range with the higherend
options coming in much higher. Now, it's
important to note here that HRC testing
isn't a linear scale, but it's more of
an exponential scale with a onepoint
hardness difference equaling a larger
percentage of hardness gain than the
previous. So, even though some of these
knives only look like they are a couple
of points higher, this actually equals a
significant increase in steel hardness.
This is due to the cone-shaped indenttor
being applied using the same force for
each test. Now, we could spend a whole
video on this subject alone, but we
aren't going to. Sharpness out of the
box. Now, this is sort of a useless
test, but I did it anyway, which was to
see which knife was the sharpest when it
was new. Now, to test this, I use a
fishing line bite test. Basically, I see
how far away each knife will bite into a
piece of monofilament 50 lb test fishing
line until the knife stops biting into
the line. I'll talk more about this test
in a minute. And the results were close
but apparent. In seventh place, we have
the Mercer coming in pretty dull. This
was no comparison the dullest factory
edge of the test. In sixth, fifth, and
fourth, we have the Mosviata, the
Babish, and the Imaru. These were all
very close together and I doubt anybody
could actually tell a difference without
doing some very fine test work. And tied
for second are the Shanzoo and Wotoff.
Both of these came extremely sharp right
from the factory. In first place
definitely goes to our edge knife works
blade which was absolutely hairsplitting
sharp when I got it and that's why it
came in first place. Geometry or behind
the edge thickness. How thin a knife is
ground has almost everything to do with
how easily it cuts stuff. Thin stuff
passes through other stuff more easily
than thick stuff does. So, we measure
this by measuring the behind the edge
thickness. Now, to measure this
accurately, we need to have all of the
knives sharpened to the same angle. So,
I sharpened all of the knives to the
lowest angled stock edge, which was 15°
per side, and took some measurements.
And here are the results. Our top three
contenders are the Edge Knife Works, the
Shanzoo, and surprisingly, the Babish.
all at or below about 10,000 behind the
edge. This is really good. Next is the
disappointing Woof at around 15,000
behind the edge. In my opinion, this is
borderline unacceptable for a knife at
this price range. This should definitely
be closer to the 10,000 mark for a good
cutting chef's knife. Will the edge
retention make up for it? We will see.
And last are the rest of the budget
options. coming in at around 19,000
behind the edge. This is really thick,
almost survival knife thick, and that
definitely doesn't help in relatively
delicate kitchen cutting tasks. Now, you
may be saying that the thickness on some
of these knives is to help keep the
knife from catastrophically chipping
during hard impacts or cutting tasks.
Well, let's see about that with our next
test, the brass rod test. The brass rod
test is testing the apex toughness by
dropping a calibrated 2x4 onto the spine
of the knife and measuring the damage
after it impacts a small brass rod.
As mentioned before, hardness plays a
major role here by keeping the apex from
deforming. Now, all of the knives are
sharpened to the same 15° per side angle
for this test, which is quite extreme, I
may add. So, how do they perform?
In last place, we have the Imaru,
sustaining pretty severe damage. Well,
this isn't the softest knife here at
56.5 HRC. I believe combined with some
of the other tests later that this is
one of the worst steels and heat
treatments of the bunch. Next, we have
the Mercer at 54.5 HRC, the softest
steel of the bunch. However, the Apex
held up fairly well, coming in very
close behind the others in this test.
Next, we have the Babish at 55.2 HRC.
This knife performed ever so slightly
better than the Mercer. However, the
steel also has some slightly better
qualities than the Mercer, which we'll
discuss later. Next, sustaining slightly
less damage than the Babish, is the Mos
Fiata. This is actually surprisingly
good for 55.8 HRC. Next, we have the
Wotoff at 57.5 HRC. To be honest, even
though this knife came in third, at
$170, I would like to see better,
especially when compared to the next
knife on the list, the Shanzoo. At about
60 HRC, the Apex definitely held up
slightly better than the WoF while being
about $100 cheaper. This is very
impressive results for a $70 knife.
Last, we have the Edge Knife Works at 63
HRC with extremely minimal damage. This
could easily be honed out on a fine
ceramic rod very quickly on the go with
no need to go back to a stone in order
to fix it. Very impressive results. It
seems as if sometimes you may actually
do get what you pay for.
[Music]
Finally, what I think a lot of you are
waiting for. Now, edge retention is a
very tricky thing to test. Now, the
reason for this is due to how the test
is measured. You see, we need some sort
of way to measure knife sharpness or
dullness as we are cutting whatever it
is that we're cutting. The problem here
is interpreting what is dull and what is
not dull. In the past, in order to test
sharpness, I've used everything from the
shaving test, the paper test, the paper
towel test, hair whittling test, fishing
line test to specialized sharpness
measuring scales, which I no longer have
or use. And I've come to the conclusion
that there are extreme variables in
every test. Personally, I think that the
simplest and most effective test out
there is the fishing line test.
Basically, it involves holding a strand
of monofilament 50 lb test fishing line
in your fingers and recording the exact
moment the edge stops fully biting into
the line about a/4 in away from your
finger. I know, super scientific. This
seems to be a very hit or miss test,
meaning that one cut can mean the
difference between biting in and skating
the line. This is not a test that you
try to beat in a sense where the goal is
to try and score as low of a number as
possible or as low of a score as
possible on some sort of push test or
try to interpret exactly when the knife
stops cutting something like paper. It's
more of a hard stop rather than an
infinite sliding scale of dullness. The
reason I like this test is because as
the knife gets sharper or duller to the
extremes, it becomes more and more
difficult to differentiate between the
extreme ends of the sharpness or
dullness scale. You can kind of
visualize this like this where as the
knife gets sharper, the difference
between ultrasharp and ultra ultra sharp
gets very difficult to measure. And we
don't really have a test we can perform
that gives us this type of precision. On
the opposite end, as the knife gets der,
it gets harder and harder to determine
what is dull depending on the test. The
paper test, for instance, has a very
large window where the knife will sort
of cut paper, but it won't cut it great.
So, there's this game where the tester
has to decide what is or isn't cutting
well enough to continue. I think what
this line bite test does is test this
middle range where the knife is still
pretty sharp when it fails biting into
the line, but it's obviously not ultra
sharp or ultra dull. I think this test
focuses more on this middle range of
sharpness rather than the extreme ends.
So, here's an example of this. We have
one knife
that immediately bites into the line.
You can see how it pulls right up on the
line. it immediately bites into it. The
next knife
does not
does not bite into the line
whatsoever. However, on our paper test,
it becomes a little bit harder to
distinguish between the two
between the two knives.
Now, some may say that they can actually
hear the difference, which you can, but
back to our chart. As a knife gets der,
it becomes harder and harder to hear or
feel this difference. Well, this is the
theory anyway, so I went with it. I
taped up the knives exposing about 1 in
of blade length and cut cardboard until
the knives stopped biting into the line.
And here are the results. The best
performer was the $300 Edge Knife Works,
cutting 240 in of cardboard before it no
longer bit into the line. In second
place was the $70 Shanzoo cutting 176
in. Next was the somewhat disappointing
$170 Wotoff cutting 112 in before it
stopped cutting the line. The last four
knives cut about the same with only 16
in of cardboard or one cut separating
them, which is probably within the
margin of error for this test. Now, on a
pure dollar per inch of edge retention
value standpoint, I know the Mercer at
$18.74
will give you the best edge retention
for your money. And the worst is the
Wotoff. However, this chart is somewhat
misleading since in order to achieve the
same number of cuts as some of the
better edge retention knives, you would
have to resharpen some of the lower-end
options in between your cuts. Now, we
can look at this from a time standpoint
or how much time does it take to make
the same 15 cuts as our best performer,
including a quick restropping or honing
in between to maintain the same
sharpness standard. And this shows that
in a pure testing format, it takes about
twice as long to complete the same task
as our best performer with the lower-end
knife options. However, this is on a
very small scale, not taking into
account the middle of the road knife
options, which get cheated somewhat on
time based on a resharpening they
otherwise wouldn't need if we increase
the test sample size.
So, one of the things not talked about a
lot in knife reviews is how well or how
easily does a knife resharpen from a
dled state. Now, this has to do with the
heat treatment, the hardness, and the
steel quality of the steel that these
knives are made out of. And basically,
the better those three things are, the
steel quality, the heat treatment, and
the hardness, the easier it's going to
be to resharpen or get these knives back
to a super sharp state. So rather than
this being a completely subjective test
and giving my opinion on which one was
the easiest to sharpen, I timed myself
sharpening each one to hair whittling
sharp after dulling each one from a
sharpened state on a sharpening stone.
And here's the results. Initially, the
results look very close, but there's
definitely a difference between our
times from the good knives to the
lower-end knives. The lower-end knives
definitely take a little extra work in
order to minimize and remove the burr on
both the stone and the strap. Now, we
could test these things forever, but I
don't think we have to because for me,
there's an obvious trend line
developing. Have you seen it yet? But
before we get into that, we've got to do
something. And this is something that
you can't really test with pen and
paper.
>> Like, at the end of the day, the knife
is meant to cut things. For me, the most
important thing is that it cuts and it's
comfortable in your hand.
>> That's why I have such a hard time doing
these reviews is because sometimes you
just like something and you can't really
explain why that is. You're like, "Oh,
this is this is my favorite." But I
don't know why. I know why. At least in
this case, because after sharpening and
testing and resharpening and retesting,
cutting everything in sight, both on
camera and off, I noticed for actual
kitchen tasks, I gravitated towards
three knives in particular. Now,
something I didn't mention at the
beginning of this video was I actually
already own several of these knives. So,
yes, I bought duplicates just for this
test. And after using all of these
knives side by side, there was most
definitely a huge difference in actual
use. That is cra like you. It's crazy
how much you can feel the difference.
Not even close. So, here's my subjective
rating. Rating the knives 0 to 100 with
100 being a theoretical perfect score.
With the Edge Knife Works scoring 90 out
of 100, this is a fantastic knife. Not
only is it thin behind the edge, but
it's also the only knife of the bunch
that's hollow ground, which means it
will keep its thinness throughout
multiple sharpenings. It just cuts the
best here, plain and simple. This is the
outlier of the group, though, but it
does give us a reference for a
comparison. Next is the Shanzoo. This
knife just feels very neutral, and it
cuts very, very well. It's super thin
and has good food release, which is
surprising given its somewhat mirror
finish. I think combined with the rest
of its results in all of these tests,
it's the best overall value here. It's
just a fantastic knife for the price,
and it looks pretty cool, too. Next is
the Babish. This knife was surprising
since it didn't look very good in most
of our other tests. However, in actual
use, cutting food, its thin geometry
paid big dividends. It just cuts really,
really well. It also notably takes a
very sharp edge. I think its only
downside is its handle. It may not be
for everyone, but I really didn't have
that big of problems with it. It just
has superior cutting performance than
most of the other knives here. And that
is simply due to its super thin
geometry. Next is the disappointing
Wotoff. Unfortunately, despite this
knife sharpening very well, getting very
sharp, having a great handle and feel,
it just doesn't cut that well due to its
super thick geometry. Sure, it feels
nice, but you'll need that comfort
because you'll be gripping this thing
harder than you should.
Really not a fan of this Woo stuff. It
just doesn't cut that well. If this
knife was just 10,000 behind the edge,
it would be in a completely different
world. Maybe that's something we'll fix
in a later video, but for $170, it's a
hard pass for me. Sorry. Next on the
list is the Moss Fiata. This knife was
noticeably better than the last two
here, mainly due to its food release.
For some reason, nothing seemed to stick
to this knife. I don't know if that's
because of the pattern on the knife or
what it is, but for some reason, nothing
stuck. And yes, they were all 20° per
side on the bevel. So, I scored this
slightly higher than the last two, even
though in other areas, this knife
performed about the same as the last
knives here. Now, the last two, both the
Mercer and the Immaru, just didn't cut
that well due to the geometry being
super thick and the food sticking to the
knife. I would say that they have better
edge retention and sharpenability than a
$1 knife from the dollar store would,
but other than that, the cutting
experience isn't a night and day
difference. Sure, the handles are a
little better than a $1 knife, but at
the end of the day, I don't think that I
could really tell a difference in a
blind cut test between these last two
knives and a $1 knife from the dollar
store. Now, finally, the total results
combined, where I combine the subjective
rating that I gave the knives with the
objective testing to give a clear
picture of exactly what's going on.
where lower is better. On this chart, we
actually have somewhat of a perfect
situation where we have a $300 Edge
Knife Works as the best expensive
option, the $70 Shanzoo as a good medium
or value price point option, and the $26
Babish as a good super budget option.
The only slightly weird thing here was
the WoF and the Babish, where the Woof
scored significantly higher in the
objective testing than the Babish, but
in actual use, the thicker geometry on
the Wotoff really was a detriment to its
cutting performance. So, here we are.
All the knives from best to worst. So,
believe it or not, I had a lot more
testing that I did that I didn't include
because it was redundant. Now, thank you
for watching and we'll see you in the
next video.
[Music]