Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I do the cooking in the house, so I decided to try out this knife set. They are marketed as "professional", but I would say that they are better described as "high end", the sort of thing that makes a nice wedding gift. The knives are sharp and look good; the holder is stylish (but perhaps fragile), but the knives are not as balanced as other quality knives.
Pro:
There are a lot of nice knife designs here, at one fairly reasonable price. The knives are German steel, but made in China. The small instruction pamphlet says they are designed in Australia. They are very sharp, and have nice chrome accents.
The holder has a 30 day warranty, but it looks great and holds the knives well. It is designed such that it uses a lot of vertical space, unlike most wood blocks that take up more horizontal space but don't reach as high.
Overall, this is a stylish set, and would look good in any modern kitchen.
25 year warranty on the knives themselves.
Con:
The kitchen sheers are not nearly heavy enough for the kind of work sheers are used for. They are more like scissors. There is a bottle opener on one end and (inexplicably) what appears to be a screwdriver tip on the other side of that end.
For a casual use knife, these are somewhat hard to maintain. Because of the high grade steel, they will need to be sharpened occasionally, and for the same reason they cannot be used in a dish washer (apparently they will stain, but possibly rust I didn't try it).
The knives are of a "1/2 design" the steel tang does not go all the way to the bottom of the handle; instead, the steel blade is inserted into the handle. A really good quality knife will have the steel go from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the handle. But that uses more of the expensive steel, whereas this design uses cheaper handle material in the entire handle. The knives work either way, but this is the cheaper construction.
I do not care for the balance of the knives, particularly the Chef's knife; they are weighted towards the blade.
The handles are designed for a casual rather than professional hold; the indentations work well when the knife is held improperly, but do not work as well when the knife is held according to culinary standards. The two exceptions are the bread knife, which works fine with this design, and the utility knife, which is only used for small cutting.
I was astonished to find that the very large box it comes in did not include an assembled block! Not only that, it has to be screwed together. They were thoughtful in actually providing a small screwdriver, but still, at the price point, to have to construct the block? I think this was done because the block is glass, and they wanted to make sure the sides did not break in shipment.
I am worried that the glass block may break. I think they would have done better to use acrylic or some other transparent material. It will last well, if nothing goes crashing into it at some point. Also, despite the sharpening that will be needed, there is no hole to hold a sharpening steel.
Summary:
The knives work well, and will provide good service for a casual chef. The nice design makes this good for a house warming or wedding present. Recommended for these uses, but don't give this to a trained chef!
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program When you buy a knife set, the knives are what matters. And this is a very nice set of knives. I've always wanted the kitchen shears and these are really nice shears plus. The knives are a great assortment, they feel great in the hand plus they cut very nice (note: I have not tried the bread knife but will this weekend). So from this point of view, they are five star.
The one issue I have is the "knife block". The one I received does not sit flat on the counter. Second, it sits up and down, rather than at an angle. Therefore, it cannot be against most of the walls in my kitchen because you cannot remove a knife without hitting the cabinet above.
Due to the stability issue and having to leave the block in the open, I worry about accidentally knocking it over and either the glass breaking or the block breaking the floor tile. But this is a small issue that I will probably figure out. This is why I really only would knock off a half star for this.
Again, I want to stress that I love the knives and that is what you are buying.
One last thing. This set is well boxed for shipping. The knives each have a plastic blade sleeve with a hard plastic tip protector for shipping. And each knive is then in its own light plastic sleeve. And the knives have their own interior cardboard box to prevent movement while shipping. The block has everything needed for assembly including a pretty nice philips head screw driver! Just be careful when you assemble and make sure the sides line up so there is no wobble.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program As a professional chef I've worked with many styles, variations and quality of knives. As a basic set these knives certainly have a nice ergonomic grip and feel, but need to have better balance. You could tell that the tang doesn't completely go to the end of the handle yet they are not off balance so much so that the average cook would know the difference. I am basing this review from a casual to moderate cook with a good working knowledge of kitchen equipment.
I have professional sharpeners at my disposal plus a variety of steels so keeping an edge on these knives is not an issues as other reviewers remarked. I like the ease in which they sharpened and the longevity of maintaining their edge. The fusion aspect of the knives is a little perplexing in that they certainly seem similar to other knives on the market. The short knife (5 inch fusion wave) certainly seemed a bit awkward in its development. Is it a large knife trying to work as a small knife or a small knife trying to pose as a larger knife?
My rating of each knife
8-inch chefs knife Good
7-inch Fusion Santoku Good
5-inch Fusion-wave Average to Below Average
9-inch bread knife Good
6-inch utility knife Below Average
4-inch paring knife Average
Utility kitchen shears Poor
There are no excellent ratings due to the balance being off, the handles shaped more for casual usage, not professional, and poor rating for such lack luster workmanship of the shears. It's like the designers were watching McGyver and trying to come up with a tool that does everything in the kitchen, yet they really missed the mark.
In regards to the block, well, don't even bother putting it together, since the company never bothered to do so. I personally recommend a magnetic knife rack to hold your knives on the wall or cupboard. They stay out of the way, are easy to get too and clean. The gimmick of glass and steel is not worth the bother in putting together. Leave the case in the box and save your time and patience.
Overall, if you own a stamped set of cutlery or something from a bargain chain store then this set will certainly be a nice addition. If you've already invested in quality and are happy with what you have then stick with them and look no further. It's my hope that the company looks at these reviews and goes back to the drawing board and reworks the knives to better represent the professional aspect they were trying to reach. They are not far off, but certainly far enough to where I can't recommend these knives to serious culinarians.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program This is a pretty decent knife set. The scissors try to do way too many things (there's a bottle opener and even a screwdriver-like-thing sticking off the handles) and end up doing most of them badly, but the knives are good. In addition to the old standards chef's knife, bread knife, paring knife, and so on is the knife i especially like: the fusion wave. It's similar in shape to a santoku, but only 5 inches long, and therefore much easier for me to handle. (I find chef's knives and even most santokus a bit unwieldy.)
The knives are a little lighter than most others i've used, but not so much that they feel cheap or have terrible balance.
The knife block, though, is cheap, frustrating, and poorly designed. First off, those shiny metal discs in the corner are just cheap plastic covers for the screws. They scratch easily and don't even look that good to start with. The glass loves fingerprints, so be careful when you're assembling it. If you end up with fingerprints between the glass and the plastic, there's no way to wipe them off. And while the clean, vertical design looks nice and takes up less counter space, it also means you can't keep it under any cabinets on the counter. Ours are a pretty standard height, and the only knife we can remove without moving the whole knife block is the paring knife. Lastly, the knife slots are all different sizes, to perfectly fit each knife. That seems like a good idea, except that it's totally unnecessary and makes putting the knives away a chore. The chef's knife, santoku, and fusion wave are all almost the same thickness, so it's really easy to put one of the latter two into the chef's knife slot without realizing. The slots are only a millimeter or two different. Then you end up playing musical knives trying to get everyone into the right slots because the chef's knife can only fit in the chef's knife slot. In a word, annoying.
And while you do have to assemble the knife block yourself, it's pretty easy and comes with its own decent little screwdriver.
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Update:
After using these knives near-daily for most of a year, they've all held their edges very well. In some cases, better than far more expensive knives.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I've been having a lot of trouble with my hands over the past couple of years, so I was eager to try these knives with ergonomic handles. At first the handles feel small compared to the regular wooden handles, but that size and shape is what makes these knives so comfortable to use. After a couple of months of use, I find the most notable thing about the handles is that I don't notice them. With my old knives, I was always thinking about how much my hand hurt while I was chopping. Now I don't think about it at all.
The knife blades are wonderful. They're high-quality steel, and very sharp. I think your appreciation of these blades will depend on what you've been using. If you're used to very expensive knives, these may not seem all that special. I cook a lot, but I've always used a mismatched set of fairly cheap knives, so these new ones are a wonderful change for me. They're so sharp that I had to adjust my usual way of chopping to avoid nicking my fingernails and fingers. If you buy these knives, be sure to ditch your cheap knife sharpener and get one that's appropriate for these better knives. Otherwise you may see a reduction in performance over time.
The knife block has some good features, but also one thing I'm still adjusting to. It takes up very little space, which is nice. You can slide it flat up against the wall when you want it out of the way. It's more sanitary than the traditional wooden knife blocks. You can wash the entire block if you want to. It's also nice to be able to see which knife you're selecting before you pull it out.
The one drawback for me is the way the knives sit straight up and down in the block. Pulling them out and putting them back is a little awkward if you're used to the conventional angled knife block.
I'm generally happy with the set after two months of use. I think it's a good mid-range knife set for home use. I especially love the chef's knife, paring knife and bread knife, but I'm finding more and more reasons to love the serrated utility knife, which is one I've never had before.
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