Below as you asked details on specific knives and my goals. It’s off topic to the thread name but may help you reply better to my needs.
There are so many companies and models that I was looking at that it does not make sense to ask people on formuł for each and every one. Especially that I’m in first please looking for general purpose kitchen knives starting with chefs knife. I started by checking kitchen knife steels. Quickly I learned that most kitchen knives available in stores are made of either cheap Chinese steel. That 1.4116 or X50 steel used in German knives is much better. I also learned about HRC. So my initial choice was for Zwilling Pro series in Christmas sales (in Europe normally cost 130$ and on sale 80$). So this was my base for new chefs and petty knives, together with curved Hendi bread knife. I can still return these
Then I learned about other harder steels like VG10/VG5/SG2/AUS10/AUS8/AUS6 and Japanese knives. However I learned that these are thin and much easier to chip and so I would like to have one or two such knives for fun. Here I was thinking about Tojiro DP3 21 Gyuto, Kotetsu VG10 Damascus, Tsunehisa AS Migaki Kiritsuke, Tamahagane San Black Gyuto, Suncraft Priffesional SG2 Guyto and even Kanetsugu Zuiun Kiritsuke in SG2.
Now after reading lest night about CATRA tests and tangible/measurable differences in steel types I do want to include that in my final choice. And so:
For general purpose kitchen knives for not worrying too much if my wife will treat them well, I see x50 steel isn’t actually as good and there are better choices. I also don’t want to make it too expensive. So seeing that Global steel has better opinions than x50 and they brag about great Catra results I want to check where they sand in comparison based on numbers.
And potentially change Zwilling to Global. Or any other available brand that may be better than Global. I don’t want to invest in crafters hand made super knives that will cost probably 5x that of Global or Zwilling.
For a hobby/investigation driven Japanese knife choice I see from CATRA that SG2 is not that much better than VG10, Aogami Super isn’t much wear resistant, I started looking for some alternatives. I see SG2 knives are x2 as expensive as VG10 and while highly praised in internet and used for higher end knives, based on CATRA this cost may not be that justified.
Here my budget is larger and I’m looking for some better available alternatives. When I get the good steel options I may only then consider specific knife alternatives to discuss.