KITCHENMUH vs Besmon: Which Electric Jar Opener Is Easier on Sore Hands?

I keep a quart jar of dill pickles in the door of my refrigerator for Sunday potato salad. For twenty-nine years I opened jars like that without giving it a thought. Then one afternoon last spring I stood at my counter with a pickle jar in one hand and a dish towel in the other and could not make the lid move. Not would not. Could not. My thumbs have arthritis at the base, both of them, and that was the afternoon I stopped pretending a rubber pad was going to keep working.

So here is the short answer. If your thumbs are the reason you are reading this, the KITCHENMUH electric jar opener is the one I would hand you. It sits flat on the lid, you press one button, and the motor does the gripping and the turning so your hands do not have to. If your problem is drawer space, or you want an opener you can carry to your daughter's kitchen, the Besmon is the smaller tool and it wins that point honestly. I own the KITCHENMUH. I bought it myself in May of last year and it has lived on my counter beside the bread box for about eighteen months. I have never owned or tried a Besmon, so everything I say about that one comes from its listing and its published specs. Where a detail is not written down, I will tell you instead of guessing.

A quick word on how I am judging these two, because you deserve to know. I am not a nurse and I am not a therapist. I am sixty-eight, I live alone in Lakeland, and I cook at home every day, with two to three hours on my feet every Sunday when my daughter Paula and her husband come for dinner. My right knee is the bad one and my thumbs are worse. What I can tell you about the KITCHENMUH is what eighteen months of pickle jars and spaghetti sauce has shown me. What I can tell you about the Besmon is what its listing says and how that compares to the job. If you are weighing any kind of aid, run it past your own doctor before you spend anything.

	KITCHENMUH	Besmon
How it works	Sits flat on the lid, one button press, and the motor grips and turns	Handheld, you hold it steady over the lid while it turns
Grip and twist you supply	None once it is seated on the lid	One steady hand on the unit
Lid sizes	Screw top lids from 1.2 to 3.5 inches across	Standard screw top lids, roughly the same everyday range
Counter and drawer space	7.28 by 4.33 by 2.75 inches, lives out on the counter	Compact enough to keep in a drawer
Hands free while it works	Both hands are free, nothing to hold	One hand stays on the unit
Taking it to someone else's kitchen	Stays home, it is a counter tool	Fits a tote bag and travels
Jars wider than 3.5 inches, like a gallon	No, outside its range	Not listed for them either
Best for	Sore thumbs and a jar most days	Small kitchens and occasional use

Where KITCHENMUH Wins

The biggest thing it wins is the thing you came for. You do not grip. You do not twist. You set the opener flat on the lid, you press the button, and the motor takes it from there. On a bad thumb day that is the whole difference between potato salad and no potato salad, and I am not being dramatic about it. The listing says it fits screw top lids from 1.2 to 3.5 inches across, and eighteen months in, that has covered every jar I bring home. Dill pickles, spaghetti sauce, jam, salsa, the relish I use for the deviled eggs. All of it.

One more thing about the lid range, because I think it is worth spelling out. The 1.2 inch bottom of that range is a small lid. The 3.5 inch top is a wide one. A standard quart of pickles lands in the middle. A pint of jam lands low. A wide mouth salsa jar lands high. In eighteen months I have not found an everyday jar that fell outside it, and I have found two that fell outside it in the other direction, which I will get to.

The second thing it wins is that it stays where you put it. This is not a gadget you hold up in the air and try to keep steady. It sits on the jar by itself, so both of your hands are free, and if a lid has ever slipped out from under you and taken a knuckle with it, you will understand why I care about that. The unit measures 7.28 by 4.33 by 2.75 inches. That is about the size of a small hardback book, and mine has not moved off its spot in eighteen months.

The third thing is harder to put a number on. I stopped asking for help. For most of my working life I ran a school cafeteria, and I opened gallon jars of pickles and mayonnaise by hand, forty hours a week, for twenty-nine years. Needing Paula to open a pint of salsa in my own kitchen did something to me that I did not like. That stopped in May of last year. I would pay for that part alone.

Where Besmon Wins

Now the honest half. The Besmon is smaller, and smaller is a real advantage. As its listing describes it, it is a compact handheld opener that you hold over the lid while it turns. My kitchen is not large. The stretch of counter between the stove and the sink is where I do everything, and there is a mat there that I am fond of, and a bread box, and now a jar opener the size of a book. A tool that lives in a drawer and comes out for two minutes is easier to live with in a kitchen that does not have a spare eight inches. If your counter is already crowded, that matters more than any spec sheet.

The other thing it wins is that you can take it with you. Mine stays home. It is a counter tool and it knows it. A handheld one goes into a tote bag and travels to Paula's kitchen at Thanksgiving, to a church supper, to the table out on the porch. If you open a jar once a week and you want one thing that handles it wherever you happen to be, the small one is the sensible choice, and I would rather say so than pretend the tool on my counter is right for every kitchen in Florida.

What Eighteen Months of Pickle Jars Taught Me

It worked the first day, which almost never happens with anything I buy for my hands. There was no learning period. I set it on a pickle jar, pressed the button, and the lid came off while I was still deciding whether to be impressed.

Let me back up and tell you why it ended up on my counter at all. Before May of last year my system was a rubber gripper pad in a drawer and a minute under hot water. That works. It worked for years. What changed is that it stopped working on the tight lids, and the hot water started to feel like a lot of standing at the sink for one jar of pickles. I still have the pad. I use it for the small caps. But it is the backup now, not the plan.

Here is the part a product page will not tell you, so I will. It misses sometimes. On a very tight lid, or a very smooth one, the first press can spin without catching, and you have to lift it, set it back down and try again. It is rare, maybe one jar in twenty, and the second try almost always takes it. It has never needed a third press on the same jar. If a machine that occasionally needs a second go would frustrate you, know that going in. I would still buy it again.

Cleaning is a damp cloth, which is all I want out of anything in my kitchen. And the opener did not replace every trick I know. It replaced the one that hurt. The rubber pad still lives in a drawer for the tiny caps, and I still run a stubborn lid under hot water now and then out of pure habit.

The Two Things Neither One Fixes

Neither of these opens a can, and neither one is built for a bottle cap the width of a nickel. If your day involves a good many small caps, the vanilla extract, a bottle of juice, a jar of mustard, then a can opener and a rubber pad are still your tools, and no electric gadget I know of is going to change that.

Neither one opens the gallon jars either. In the school kitchen I opened gallon pickles and gallon mayonnaise by hand, and those lids are wider than 3.5 inches, so they sit outside the range of the KITCHENMUH. I am not going to pretend otherwise to sell you a jar opener. At home my jars are quarts and pints, and that is the size this tool was built for. If you buy your pickles by the gallon, you want a different answer.

And I should say one more thing plainly. Opening a jar is not the whole of it. If your hands have reached the point where the jar is one problem out of six, a jar opener is a help and not a solution, and your doctor is the one to talk to about the rest. Mine has been straight with me about what arthritis does over the years, and I would rather pass that along than hand you a gadget as though it were the end of the story.

Eighteen months, a pickle jar most Sundays, and I have not once handed a lid to my daughter. That is the whole review.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the KITCHENMUH if your hands are the reason you are reading this. If the base of your thumbs aches after a jar of pickles, if you have started leaving jars on the counter for someone else, if there is a jar in the refrigerator right now that you have been avoiding, this is the tool I would put in your hand. It is at its best when you open something most days and you want the opener sitting out where you can reach it with one hand.

Buy the Besmon if your hands are mostly fine and your kitchen is short on space, or if you want one opener that travels. That is not a consolation prize. Some people open three jars a month, have four feet of counter and no drawer to spare, and for them the smaller tool is simply the better fit.

If you are somewhere in the middle, here is the test I would use. Picture your kitchen at seven in the morning on a Tuesday. Which one is where you can reach it without moving anything else? Buy that one. An opener in a drawer you cannot get open is not doing you any favors, and I say that as a woman who has owned several things she could never find.

And if you are buying this for a parent, this is the note I would pass along. Do not buy it and put it in a cupboard. Set it out, open one jar together the first time, and leave it where their hand falls. Half the value of a thing like this is that it is already out when the jar is in front of you. Paula did that for me with a knee wrap she picked out, and it is the reason I actually wear it.