I'm rarely attracted to clad knives, and especially not the Hiro, so I'd probably take the MAC. Carter does good cladding; Hiromoto, not so much (in my opinion, of course). The one I had was way too thick, curved along the entire edge, and felt funky to use. I'm buying a MAC for my friend Mac's birthday, and that's as much because it's a decent "introductory" j-knife as it is because he gets his name on the knife for no extra charge.