It is worth learning. A single two sided whetstone and some basic skill will give you sharp knives for the rest of your life.
Bonus, keep your cheap knives. They are typically a softer metal that will require maintenance more often so you can practice.
Also learn when you need to sharpen and when you need to hone. Your knife may be sharp but the edge is out of shape (folded, bent over). A few swipes of a hone and you could be back to 80-90% sharp.
At this point I use medium value knives and sharpen them once a year. I have no regrets regarding learning to sharpen with a whetstone. I also typically don't sharpen beyond 1000 grit and it's still enough for people to remark on how sharp the knives are.
That's no longer true. A dishwasher safe trend took over, most cheap knives are extremely hard now. I've a nice old set of not quite stainless that sharpen very easily and the ten thousand grit polish stone I have actually does something. Most new knives I sharpen for people I don't even go over 3000 because they are far too hard to take much effect. My personal favorites are old Wiltshire 70s wood handled inox cleavers and Opinel knives, those opinel especially turn into a razor incredibly easily.
Give them away to friends and family who aren't into knives. There are a lot of garbage knives out there, so it helps to have a friend who knows what I should be using and how I should take care of it.
I've heard that, but I've only ever cut myself with the really sharp knives and yeah it's clean, but when the knife is dull it just kind of pokes my finger and that's it
I bought some knife set that cost like 1000 dollars. It was an impulsive buy when I won an award at work.
Damn I learned expensive knives are worth every penny. I’ve had them twenty years. Normally I’d buy a knife and have to throw it away after a couple of years because they couldn’t be sharpened as they were cheap.
You can sharpen every knife. Better knifes stay sharper for longer, but they still need to be sharpened regularly. This also applies to ceramic knifes, which stay sharper even longer, but also need to be sharpened after a lot of use.