Misen came out with a v2 of their knife and had a 25% sale. A friend was looking for a decent chef's knife so I offered to get it, play with it, and sell it to him for $40.
Spoiler alert: It's a pretty solid knife for $50 shipped. Without a sale, it starts getting into the "well why not just get a Tojiro DP Gyuto for a little more" territory but I'm evaluating it at $50.
Performance: At ~230g, it's in between a Wusthof (260) and a MAC Pro (190). The grind is a bit rough and never felt quite as smooth as a Wusthof even though there's no significant difference practically. Not unexpected because it's basically the same approximate basic angle. The Misen has a bit of a weird lift right at the heel that I don't love but otherwise the Misen and the Wusthof have approximately the same width flat spot. I ultimately prefer cutting with either the Wusthof or the MAC because the profile of the Misen seems kind of in between and doesn't engage any of existing muscle memory (and it's not such a great knife that I'd retrain to cut with it specifically). It's not bad, it's not great but solid for $50.
Sharpening: It's AUS-10 and so sharpens a little bit like VG-10. Not hard to get a burr going, at least not especially hard. So, OK. I eventually thinned it slightly and took it up to 6k synth to polish and back down to 1k microbevel for some bite. Much nicer than out of the box.
Fit and Finish: Pretty rough. This is where I'm mostly disappointed. The grind is rough towards the bolster, towards base of spine, the handle isn't smoothly finished, it's not very symmetrically shaped, etc. I took a sandpaper/micromesh progression to it to clean it up a bit (what you see in pictures) and it was slightly better.
Overall it's a perfectly fine knife for $50. I'd even recommend it to people at this price. The worst part about the knife is the marketing which is most baloney.
Spoiler alert: It's a pretty solid knife for $50 shipped. Without a sale, it starts getting into the "well why not just get a Tojiro DP Gyuto for a little more" territory but I'm evaluating it at $50.
Performance: At ~230g, it's in between a Wusthof (260) and a MAC Pro (190). The grind is a bit rough and never felt quite as smooth as a Wusthof even though there's no significant difference practically. Not unexpected because it's basically the same approximate basic angle. The Misen has a bit of a weird lift right at the heel that I don't love but otherwise the Misen and the Wusthof have approximately the same width flat spot. I ultimately prefer cutting with either the Wusthof or the MAC because the profile of the Misen seems kind of in between and doesn't engage any of existing muscle memory (and it's not such a great knife that I'd retrain to cut with it specifically). It's not bad, it's not great but solid for $50.
Sharpening: It's AUS-10 and so sharpens a little bit like VG-10. Not hard to get a burr going, at least not especially hard. So, OK. I eventually thinned it slightly and took it up to 6k synth to polish and back down to 1k microbevel for some bite. Much nicer than out of the box.
Fit and Finish: Pretty rough. This is where I'm mostly disappointed. The grind is rough towards the bolster, towards base of spine, the handle isn't smoothly finished, it's not very symmetrically shaped, etc. I took a sandpaper/micromesh progression to it to clean it up a bit (what you see in pictures) and it was slightly better.
Overall it's a perfectly fine knife for $50. I'd even recommend it to people at this price. The worst part about the knife is the marketing which is most baloney.
