I respectfully disagree. I recently bought Naniwa 5 and 8k hones. I used both right out of the box, without lapping, and honed up a batch of 16 razors. They all came out great. Lapping out of the box, though probably a good idea, is not necessarily necessary. As with all things, there must be a percentage of hones that are flat or close enough to flat to use straight away, and others that are not.