Weber Rapid Fire Chimney Starter

Well-balanced knife with deeply tapered pointed serrations handled every task with exceptional ease and control, even for our left-handed tester. Not as good for large hands.

Comfortable, sharp blade and pointed serrations performed almost as well as our top knife, struggling a tad more with crusty bread. Taller blade was easier on large-handed testers. Good for lefties.

Lethally sharp forged blade with deeply tapered pointed serrations was easy to control during delicate tasks. Feels (and is) expensive and isn't good for lefties or cooks with large hands.

Extra-long blade excelled at tackling a large, crusty loaf and splitting a cake round. But its length kept us poking at the back of the kitchen counter when cutting smaller foods such as tomatoes.

Comfortable, fairly lightweight, sharp knife, but scallop-shaped serrations slid over bread crust and tomato skin for several strokes before biting in. But for its rounded edges, it would be a winner.

Thick, forged knife weighed nearly twice as much as the top-rated knives. It glided through bread but was described as feeling "like an ax" cutting a tomato or splitting a cake.

Priciest knife in the lineup looks and feels like a chef's knife with serrations. The alleged 10-inch blade is only 9 1/2 inches. Acceptable, but not stellar, performance.

Saw-toothed serrations and too-short blade (just 8 3/4 inches) were not up to tackling big bread loaves or cake rounds. Praised for paper-thin slices of tomato.

An odd mix of wavy, pointed, and rounded serrations lacked bite and held this knife back, particularly when trying to slice through thick, leathery bread crust.

While this knife felt solidly built, its blade was too short and its pointed serrations too tiny, making it struggle through both hard bread and sticky dough.

This knife's downward-tilting handle unnerved testers. Ranked last for slicing bread: Too short-bladed and offset heel got trapped inside the loaf. Uncomfortable held sideways to halve a cake layer.

Like a caricature of our favorite models, this knife was called "overly curved and overly pointed." It snagged and tore the soft sticky-bun dough, chewed up toast, and made a disheveled club sandwich.