Originally Posted by WhyFi

I'm sure they're not bad knives. I haven't looked over them too closely, but they strike me as more along the lines of Japanese Knives lite, in both good and bad. Fans of Japanese knives are particular about a lot of the characteristics: the type of grind, the blade profile, blade thickness, core steel, and the list goes one. Provenance - the region, the smith, the sharpener, etc - is also a thing. You're not going to get all of that at the Shun level of production, but I'm sure that you're going to get decent steel that'll hold a finer edge than the big German brands.