Misen Knife Review: Crowd Funded, Fascination Approved

If you’ve been in the market for some good quality knives that actually slice well and look good doing it, then the Misen Knife Essentials Set may be it.

As someone who knows his way around the kitchen, having good knives is important to me. I’ve been hearing about the Misen knives for a couple of years now and finally took the plunge to try them. Upon receiving them, the first thing I noticed was how sharp they were.

The color of the hilt is attractive and the heft of these knives communicate that they are durable professional kitchen tools.

Since I wanted to see how long the blade could keep the level of sharpness they came with, I made it a point to not use my knife steel on them. After four weeks of regular use, I found no discernible difference in the sharpness. The same cannot be said for my old Wüsthof knife, as I run that one over the knife steel almost every time I use it.

To thoroughly run the Misen knives through the testing wringer I tested these knives by cutting a number of common kitchen and dinner items. The items we tested them on were:

• Cucumbers
• Potatoes 
• Garlic
• Leafy greens

I decided to pit the two brands up against each other with a cucumber to see which would cut a thinner slice.

Misen won this test hands down, as I definitely had more control and the cucumber slice was much thinner.

The Misen Chef’s Knife is a great knife for all general kitchen tasks like chopping, mincing, and slicing. In our tests it had no problem cutting through the cucumber with just the weight of the knife.

It stayed super sharp and with a fairly standard 8” blade, it’s hard to go wrong with this one.

The 3” Paring Knife is probably my favorite of the three knives. I have used plenty of paring knives in the past, but there’s something really special about the shape of this one.

It probably has to do with the unique shaped bolster that helps to give the proper pinch grip. I feel completely in control over the knife and comfortable doing detailed work with this one.

The 9.5” Serrated Bread Knife is much longer than any of the other bread knives that I’ve used in the past.

But like all the others, it’s very sharp and high-quality, and the blade doesn’t flex when cutting bread. It does a great job of slicing and is comfortable to use.

After testing them at least 2 times a day for 4 weeks, the winner between the two brands was clear. Misen was sharper, easier to control, and provided much cleaner and thinner cuts. Plus, it didn’t hurt that the knives are extremely aesthetically pleasing also. We also ran an informal poll of houseguests who’d had a chance to use them, or see them in action. All of them chose the Misen knife as the superior blade.

In my opinion, they are at least as good as the Wüsthof blades, if not better. And with a price tag of $150 for all 3, it’s a no-brainer.

When it comes to quality in knives, a huge part of this has to do with the material the blade is made from. In the case of Misen, their knives are made from Japanese high-carbon stainless steel. This type of steel is supposed to rival the German steel used in the Our Place knives.

However, the Misen blades use primarily AUS-10 steel in their blades. AUS-10 steel is one of the top-quality grades of steel that can be used in a knife. The Misen Serrated Knife is the only one of their blades made with the AUS-8 steel, which is slightly less hard than the AUS-10 steel. Both types of steel are easy to keep sharp and sharpen.

The brand isn’t as forthcoming about the exact location of their manufacturing plant, though, other than to say it’s outside of Shanghai. A big part of this might have to do with the fact that they use Genimex, which is a contract manufacturing company. This company helps them with designs, prototypes, packaging, and manufacturing.

While Genimex claims to have their own internal team for quality control, there’s no way for us, as the consumer, to know what that means for the actual manufacturing facility. Nor do we have any information as to where their raw materials are sourced, other than Misen telling us their steel is imported from Japan.

In a case like this where the products are touted to be high-quality, I would really like to see more transparency on the two aforementioned points to validate that claim.

Even though we can’t confirm the quality in full of the Misen knives due incomplete transparency in their supply chain, our personal experience was they were high quality. Based on our tests alone, the quality seems far superior to most other knives we’ve ever had the chance to come across.

It doesn’t hurt that the price point of these knives is extremely consumer-friendly too. Since they are so comfortable to handle, remain pointedly sharp, and cut through everything with great ease it’s difficult to find a reason not to try them. And if you add in their lifetime guarantee for replacement of any products that become damaged, they are really hard to beat.

Misen offers consumers a mystery discount (…20% 🤫) by signing up for their email list and text notifications. The brand also states if you want to know about new products and receive discounts, this is the way to go. Other than that, they don’t really offer any other discounts or coupons since their prices are pretty low, to begin with.