You need one good knife more than a block of mediocre ones. This desk review sorts eight chef knives by kind, plus three tools that keep them sharp, with prices checked on the makers' pages on September 29.
The workhorses: the Victorinox Fibrox 8-inch ($67), America's Test Kitchen's winner for nearly three decades, and the Mercer Millennia (about $21 to $31 at dealers), the budget pick at both ATK and Serious Eats. The testers don't always agree: Serious Eats doesn't recommend the Victorinox.
Japanese gyuto: Tojiro's F-808 (about $130, per Bon Appétit), MAC's MTH-80 ($190, Bon Appétit's best overall and highly recommended by ATK) and Shun's Classic Western Cook's Knife ($204.95, ATK's upgrade pick). German classic: the Wüsthof Classic ($170), Serious Eats' best chef's knife. Direct-to-consumer: Goldilocks ($70) and Made In ($129), which two testers see very differently.
Keep it sharp: a $35 Wüsthof honing steel for every week, a King 1000/6000 whetstone to learn on, or Chef'sChoice's Pronto pull-through if you never will. Hand-wash, dry, and cut on wood or plastic, never glass.
The page has a side-by-side table of steel, hardness, edge angle and weight, and a how-to-choose guide: /reviews/chef-knives
PointCast has not held or cut with any of these, so there is no star rating. Every link is direct to the maker. No link, no commission.