Under $25 scores: These $8 Guffman Smart Cutter Kitchen Scissors easily cut veggies, fruit and food

The Guffman Smart Cutter Kitchen Chopping Scissors have the utility of a knife with a built-in cutting surface, which makes them super useful for a variety of kitchen tasks. Not only do they make quick work of prepping fruits, vegetables and herbs but they can even handle things like cheese and meat. In addition to cutting ingredients into bite-size pieces, the Smart Cutters can also be used to cut pizza slices, sandwiches and quesadillas for serving.

Equipped with a sharp stainless steel blade and sturdy plastic base, the Smart Cutters can slice through some pretty tough ingredients, from apples to raw chicken, and then clean up with just a swipe of a soapy sponge (though they are dishwasher safe as well). The ergonomic handles and spring action make them easy to use, and their light weight (just under 9 ounces) and safety latch make them ideal to toss in a picnic basket or camping bag, saving you the space of a separate cutting board and knife (and the hassle of figuring out how to safely pack an exposed blade).

Because the blade of the Smart Cutters is always either locked in place or guided directly through a single plane to the cutting surface, the risk of cutting yourself with this tool is minimal, even though they are as sharp as some of my best kitchen knives. They are likely to stay that way longer, too, which means the Guffman Smart Cutter Kitchen Chopping Scissors provide tremendous return on your dollar for an under-$25 tool that is the opposite of a single-use kitchen gimmick.

How I found the Guffman Smart Cutter Kitchen Chopping Scissors

As a kitchen traditionalist, I naturally recoil from the idea that there’s a better tool than a quality chef’s knife and a silicone cutting board. I also loathe single-use kitchen tools that take up valuable drawer space and only get used once or twice a year. I was sure the Guffman Smart Cutters were one of those gadgets — in the same vein as herb and pizza scissors I had seen in the past. I was pleasantly surprised to discover otherwise.

I took a chance on ordering and reviewing the Guffman Smart Cutters on a recommendation from a friend and initially remained unimpressed. They were bulkier than my normal kitchen shears and came with a holster I immediately dismissed because surely they wouldn’t get enough use to deserve their own place on my countertop. So the Smart Cutters sat on my kitchen island for a week, and a strange thing happened: I found myself reaching for them more and more as I cooked and began to fully appreciate this unique tool.

I discovered that the Smart Cutters spared me from having to break out and clean a cutting board and knife every time I needed to make a quick slice or dice, allowing me to cut ingredients directly into my cooking pot or pan quickly and easily and saving me time while cooking. I also discovered a number of other innovative uses for them. And for $9.99 on Amazon with free next-day shipping for Amazon Prime members, I say they are well worth the cost for all you can do with them.

Why it’s a score

The Smart Cutters are definitely a function-first kitchen tool, but what there is to the design is pleasant enough: black, gray and stainless steel with a white plastic cutting surface. The handles have one of the most ergonomic shapes I’ve ever experienced, with a nearly 5-inch silicone grip and curved rests for your thumb and forefinger and spring-guided action. Some reviews have said the safety latch is difficult to maneuver but I found it easy, and I appreciate that it is a bright red color and clicks into place noticeably so you can feel confident the locking mechanism is engaged.

At 5 inches long and about three-quarters of an inch thick, the blade can get through most common ingredients, even large root vegetables like carrots and potatoes. My first test, though, was a Granny Smith apple, which was a bit ambitious. The Smart Cutters are limited with large-diameter ingredients, one of their few flaws. But I was surprised that they could wedge half an apple efficiently. Safely, too — although the manufacturer does not recommend children using this product, my 8-year-old handled them with ease. Because they operate like a pair of scissors, there is minimal risk of slicing anything that doesn’t cross the cutting surface, even though the blade is quite sharp.

The design helps it stay that way, too, since it prevents common user errors that dull regular knives, like using the sharp edge to brush ingredients into piles. One of the nice things about the Smart Cutters is that you don’t need a cutting board at all; you can simply use them to slice items directly into the cooking vessel: cheese and herbs into an omelet in a frying pan, for instance, or beef chunks into a stew pot.

I’m not a fan of mixing raw and cooked foods, so I recommend getting a second pair of Smart Cutters and designating one for raw ingredients or meats and seafood, and one for produce and cooked foods. (At the price, it’s not too much of a spend.)

Cutting through cooked foods is, in my opinion, one of the greatest functions of the Smart Cutters. I have yet to find a pizza cutter that won’t dull and/or rust, and although I previously scoffed at pizza scissors, I have to say the Smart Cutters make easy work of slicing a slice. When you have young kids in the house, you are eternally cutting things into bite-size portions, and for that, the Smart Cutters were amazing. Quesadillas, grapes, pancakes — all cut to size with a single snip. I haven’t tried them on desserts yet, but this is one of those tools that you keep discovering new uses for, so I imagine I’ve only skimmed the surface of its uses.

Bottom Line

I was needlessly afraid that the Guffman Smart Cutter Kitchen Chopping Scissors would be another gimmicky, single-use kitchen tool that would be banished to my junk drawer, but instead, I found using them to be an endlessly useful way to save time in the kitchen. Adding a set to any home kitchen will, at minimum, halve your prep work.