IKEA has released its version of the ceramic knife. They offer a 2 knife gift set retailed at $39.99. Not a bad price for 2 large ceramic knives. Does it live up to high standards? Or is this a typical mass produced IKEA product? We’ve review them here.
DETAILS
Blade material: Zirconium-Oxide
Handle Material: ABS plastic
Size: 5 inch vegetable knife & 6 inch Japanese kitchen knife
Origin: China
Cleaning & Care: Hand wash with mild dish soap
PERFORMANCE
The edge of the knife appeared to be well honed. The blade was sharp out of the box and had a nice feel to them. It sliced through food with relative ease. These knives cut as clean as the Kobe ceramic knife we reviewed, but nothing close to how sharp we expect a ceramic knife to be.
The handles are made of an ABS plastic. They felt very hard in the hand, with not much give. The design and shape of the handles felt a bit awkward, putting the arm and wrist in a less than normal position. IKEA seemed to design the handles for appearance rather than comfort. We are not sure if the ridges in the handle are a design element, or if they are for added grip. They didn’t help much in terms of the grip.
DURABILITY
We used this set of knives exclusively for 6 weeks. The handle held up well to daily use and washing. There were no signs of wear. The blade and handle remained firmly attached to each other.
The blade was a different story. The 5 inch white ceramic knife held up after daily use. We could tell it was getting dull, but it was still sharp and did not require any sharpening. We did notice that there were already 4 small chips on the edge of the blade!
The 6 inch Japanese knife seemed to dull within a week. We visually inspected the knife and found it had 12 tiny chips on the blade! We treated these knife with the same care we treat all of our ceramic knives. These particular knifes were a lot more susceptible to chipping than any other ceramic knife we have used. We will attempt to return this one for a replacement and we will rerun our test.
THE FINAL VERDICT
This ceramic knife set by IKEA is well priced. The white blade held up to daily use without any immediate problems but the fact that we already had 4 chips on the edge in such a short amount of time makes me worry. The black blade seemed to have problems almost too soon. It would be hard to recommend these knives to anyone due to the amount of problems we saw on both knives. We can accept the fact that we may have simply received a bad set of ceramic knives. We are going to attempt to exchange these for a new set. Stay tuned, we will post an update.
We bought the Ikea set before reading your review; while our black knife has held up well, so far, I’ve noticed two or three chips in the while blade — within the first two weeks of use!
If this is important to you, stay away!
Any luck with the new set?
I am very interested in these knives, so please leave another comment.
Hello, we did receive our replacement set of knives. We are close to finished with retesting of the knives. We’ll post an update soon.
This is the worst ceramic knife ever!
WOW! Do those chips in the blade mean someone may be ingesting the small particles of sharp ceramic blade? That doesn’t sound very safe to me!
Any news on the update? They’re going for half price next week in German IKEAs so I’m interested in buying a pair if they’re anywhere near useable – just a yes or no would do 🙂
Thanks!
I bought a set of the knives and after using the white one for the first time to cut a ham with it snapped into,I just hope they will send me a replacement,I use the black one alot and have never had any problems with it..
after 7 months my knife broke in two slicing an onion
I’ve had these for a little less than a year and yes, I saw significant chipping in the blade.
With ceramic knives you need to know the care instructions. For one never leave it soaking in water and never use them cutting on a stone cutting board only plastic or wood. Don’t use hard pressure or twist blade when cutting. Hope this helps.
I tried these, and after a fortnight they were both chipped to hell, and I never slice anything tougher than (boneless) ham. If I wanted serrated knives, I would’ve bought serrated knives. I don’t particularly like the idea of feeding my guests bits of knife edge, either…
Got myself a Taylor’s Eye Witness ceramic the other day, so I’m putting it through its paces now.
I’m currently looking to buy new knives because the first couple of weeks the IKEA ceramic knives were unusable. They were great at first but the big one is chipped and trying to cut a ripe tomato is impossible.
My advice would be to buy a good steel knife and sharpen it regularly.