Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I use knives 40 hours a week for work as a butcher and then a couple more cooking at home. I'm fairly picky when looking for knives, because of how much I use them. But I'm also a professional with years of experience using knives. I was looking for something in the mid price range as a new boning knife for work as the Dexter boning knife that's provided doesn't hold a super sharp edge long enough (although it would be an amazing knife for at-home kitchen use). This knife is plagued with issues, which I was expecting since it is not a reputable brand name or good German or Japanese steel, and I'll go into each one. I will say it was well-packaged and opening it up left a good first impression that gave me some hope. But it ended there. The first thing I noticed is there's a pattern embossed into the knife above the blade. This is to try to mimic the Damascus steel look of Japanese knives, but it's cheaply done and looks tacky. Not only this, but it gets the knife caught in the meat and is an extra surface for bacteria to grow. Next, the feel of the knife. The handle is much heavier than the blade of the knife, leading to a heavily off-balance knife. Some people prefer this, but I have found it gives less control of the knife where you need it. On top of this, the handle is very smooth and doesn't have any contours, making it hard to grip and keep in place. That paired with the fact that it's handle-heavy just ruins any control of the knife that you might have had; if the handle gets wet or bloody, it becomes impossible to grip. Next, the finger guard. While it's nice having something like a finger guard (although it's not necessary if the handle is contoured and so slippery), this particular design has a very aggressive finger guard which catches on the meat since it itself isn't sharp. This paired with the embossing on the blade make it much more difficult to make cute. Next, the sharpness. This knife came right out of the box and into use and the lack of quality control became very apparent here. The top half of the blade was moderately sharp; duller than a knife that's coming from the manufacturer or a professional sharpener should be, but about what it would be if sharpened at home. The bottom half of the knife was pretty dull. The difference was extremely noticeable when cutting exclusively with one half vs the other as opposed to a natural rolling cut. I tried honing it, but that didn't help. So I sharpened it myself and it was decently sharp throughout, about the same as the top half was from the manufacturer. Finally, the steel. I used this knife for a couple hours despite its issues to give it a fair shot. The steel is of a lower quality than even my standard boning knife and even with constant honing, it was dull after a couple hours. In comparison, my Dexsteel $20 boning knife can go 2-3 days of constant use with honing before it needs sharpening. Overall, this is just a low quality knife and I was fairy disappointed because of all of the great reviews that are on here. It might look fancy, but looks are deceiving. The manufacturer just hopes you don't use the knife often enough or know knives enough to realize it's poor-quality. If you're looking for a good, cheap knife and you only plan on using it in the kitchen, go with a Mercer Milennial. If you want a really nice knife and don't mind spending money up front for something high-quality that will last a lifetime, go with a Wusthof Classic Ikon or a Shun Premier.