Ok, a few rounds of chopping. First I depended on my memory to share a few thoughts here. I did a smaller follow-up round just to confirm said memory. Third, did another follow-up while jotting down a few notes. After all that I don't have anything earth shattering to share that has not been said, unfortunately, but it was a good excuse to cut crap up.
I did a comparison on 3 from Kip: the pass-around (260x55 251g), a work pony (WP) (241x53 226g), and a work horse (WH) (255x59 289g). Unfortunately I don't have a laser from him yet...somewhere down the road.
As stated by someone before, I am a home cook so I started with onions. In dicing, not much difference in the horizontal cuts, other than my WP was a little better than the WH and the chevron was probably the best but all were close. Vertical cuts were all very easy, all 3 are from Kip so it makes sense. My WP and WH had onions sticking to the blade on the final cuts, the chevrons actually had them staying on the board. For making larger chunks, making thick slices thru half onions and then chopping that all 3 performed similarly.
Potatoes: the chevron was better than my WH which was reasonably better than my WP in release. I was not using soaked potatoes so maybe the differences would be amplified, but I don't think I would have the dedicated potato knife that was mentioned earlier.
For sweet potatoes they all were reasonably close, though due to the force of going thru them vs. the exaggerated motions on some of the potato cuts all 3 had good release. On a few of the cuts I did get wedging on the chevron that I did not get on the other two. I don't know if it was just an off few cuts, but they happened.
On the potatoes and especially on the sweet potatoes, pausing at the bottom and much more when I did not hold down the left side, the flat left side definitely sticks to the produce. I assume in production it would not be flat ground.
Since cucumbers were included by others, the only thing I would say is that the release was best on the chevron, then WH, then WP.....as it should have been.
End result, it was fun to play around with but I don't think I would be adding it to the collection. I don't think it is worth the extra effort from Kip and the extra expense that should reflect that effort. The true hook grind that someone compared to seemed to have a bigger difference but I am obviously happy with the 2 I have from Kip in that I will be adding a 3rd.
I PM'ed
@Ivang earlier today and I will either hand this off or mail it out once arrangements can be made or an address obtained.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I lightly touched all 3 up on a Gesshin 2k to make sure they were all on the same level. Easy on the stones, all 3.