The best can openers

Top-cut versus side-cut: the only decision that matters

A top-cut opener puts a hardened wheel through the lid just inside the rim and rolls it round. It is fast, it is cheap, and it leaves you holding a disc of metal with a freshly cut edge all the way round it. That disc is the reason can openers send people to urgent care.

A side-cut (often sold as “smooth edge” or “safe-cut”) opener grips the rim and cuts through the side of the can below the seam. The lid comes away whole and flat, neither piece has a cut edge, and the blade never touches the food. It is slower, it needs a firmer squeeze to bite, and it costs more.

If you cook for yourself and nobody else ever touches the can opener, top-cut is a perfectly rational choice and you should buy the KitchenAid. If a child, a housemate or anyone with reduced hand strength will use it, pay for the side-cut. That is the whole decision.

When an electric opener is the right answer

An electric opener is not a luxury upgrade; it is an accessibility tool that happens to be sold next to the manual ones. If the problem is grip — arthritis, a hand injury, tendonitis, any condition where sustained rotational force is painful — no manual opener solves it, including the comfortable ones. One button does.

The cost is counter space, and in a small kitchen that is a genuine cost. A 50 W one-touch opener occupies about the same footprint as a travel mug, which sounds trivial until you remember what else is competing for that counter: a toaster, a coffee maker, a air fryer and a dish rack. Our starter-kit budget page treats counter inches as a currency, and an electric can opener spends a lot of it for one job.

One detail worth knowing: an electric opener is still a top-cut mechanism. The magnetic lid holder means the lid does not drop into the food, which is the problem it is actually solving — but the edge of that lid is just as sharp as it is on a manual top-cut opener. Electric does not mean smooth-edge.

What to look for

1. Knob diameter, not handle length. The thing you turn is the thing that fails you. A knob under about an inch across is hard to use with wet or soapy hands, which is exactly when you use a can opener.
2. Stainless cutting wheel, and hand-wash it. Every opener in this category uses a hardened steel wheel on a pivot. The dishwasher is what kills them: it strips the lubricant from the pivot and the wheel starts tearing rather than cutting.
3. A lid lifter or magnet. Otherwise you are fishing a sharp disc out of a full can with a fork, which is the actual mechanism of most can-opener injuries.
4. Skip the multi-tools. A bottle opener moulded into the handle is free and harmless. A can opener that also claims to be a jar opener, a bag cutter and a bottle opener is usually worse at all four.

What to skip

Butterfly or “church key” openers. The old-fashioned twist-key type with no gearing. They work, they cost almost nothing, and they require more hand strength than any other option on the market. Buy one for a camping box, not a kitchen drawer.

Battery-powered clamp-on openers. The ones that sit on the rim and walk around the can unattended. When they work they are delightful; when the can is slightly out of round they stall halfway and leave you with a half-opened can and a sharp flap. A corded 50 W unit is the more reliable form of the same idea.

Anything with a plastic cutting wheel housing. The wheel needs to be held in rigid alignment under load. Plastic flexes, the wheel skews, and the cut wanders off the seam.