To that observation I'd add (h/t my Slack friends) this interesting site Seattle Ultrasonics stood up:
https://seattleultrasonics.com/pages/knife-database
One thing I notice here is that Japanese knives (and my trusty MAC) fare really well on the BESS and CATRA scale, but relatively poorly on the "Food Cutting Rank", which is based on an ad-hoc seeming performance scale of how well their robot fared with a bunch of cutting tests that included stuff like bread and cheese (h/t again Slack friends) --- which nobody uses a chef's knife to cut.
That's a weird scale to plot chef's knives across --- unless the purpose of building that scale was to showcase an electronic knife that does well on tasks people don't normally use chef's knives for, but maybe not as well on chef knife daily driver tasks.
I'll cut bread with my chef's knife (amazon shun knockoff) when I want to make less of a mess. One interesting thing I noticed is that when Scott was cutting bread in the video he was cutting a croissant and no crumbs fell.
It will be interesting to see the knife in the hands of real chefs. Two things I'm curious about are whether the ergonomics of the button are good, and whether the ultrasonic action atomizes foods as they're being cut, changing the experience of cooking in some way.
The blade quality doesn’t look great but I think any decent cook that knows how to hone will do just fine with it.
I’m not sure I’d spend the money and replace my expensive knives for a relatively rare edge case but it’s a neat innovation that might catch on elsewhere, or maybe they’ll make premium lines.
Not really? I feel like this is for the other people, the folks who don't have the training to use a chefs knife super well. I'd rather see a decent home cook compare it to their knife in general prep.
"The best tools shouldn't only be accessible to the pros" but his knife costs more than every knife in that database.
The weight is listed in their help articles as 330g. I also think that handle is chunkier than a typical high end chef's knife. It may be easier to cut things with it, but I think your hand and arm are going to get tired of using it more quickly than with a regular knife at ~100g less.
And I realize these fare worse than the high end japanese and german knives, but it's hard to get excited about a $400 knife you can't put in the dishwasher when you can get a perfectly credible fibrox knife for about a tenth of that, which doesn't require charging and can tolerate 'careless home cook' levels of abuse.
For me, this works better than increasing the amount of hand dishes I have to do.
I think my other points matter more. I think people who are invested in the experience as you suggest care about more than just the edge and finish, they care about the weight and balance and feel as well. I think this knife is probably worse on those qualities.
I don't mean to say this knife sucks or that this guy is dumb. It's a cool knife, and he's clearly not dumb. I just think this is more a passion project curiosity kind of thing than a useful product addressing a large market need. Maybe a future mass market version (cheaper steel, stamped, more contoured handle) would change my mind.
Though: do. not. put. your. $300. knife. in. the. dishwasher.
“This has all the hallmarks of a product that’s going to be disappointing but I’m so optimistic it won’t be.”
I’m seriously hopefuls it works because vibroblades (I mean, “progressive knives” and “high frequency blade”) are awesome and the timelines of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Metal Gear are getting closer. Which may, or may not be a good thing.
HOZO NeoBlade Wireless Ultrasonic Cutter
My question is: would there still be an improvement if they used a slicing action?
As an example are tons of people pushing Feather or Astra or similar ultra sharp shaving razors. I bought a ton of sample packs the ones I liked the most were Kai, which are considered relatively dull, but have properties which make the overall experience better (I recall reading they’re thicker and vibrate less during cutting).
To me that makes this knife cutting benchmark more attractive than sharpness or retention, but I still have questions about technique used in the benchmarks, and how that affects knife performance (e.g. I would never try to cut bread by just pressing down as this move does).
This is mostly just a remark on the fact that BESS is probably just measuring the factory edge… which only matters until it has dulled the first time?
Carbide size maybe? But mostly I think it changes toothiness (so slicing, not push cutting). Also, I think that affects how hard or easy it is to get a given edge, but not how good the edge (as measured by BESS) can actually be.
All of the Japanese brands I recognized were in the top 10 (out of 21) with the MAC being exactly in the middle.
Hi, originally-trained Oriental cook here. Yes, we do use chefs knives to cut cheese. Also cleavers. Also wires.
- a chopping knive, 9-12" depending on one's hand
- a utility knife for slicing, about 6"
- a paring knife, a cheaper ordinary one is fine
Don't forget the follow up
(Amusingly, butter is one of the demos in this video.)