Quite a while ago, I bought one of the cooks essentials knives, I think it was from the techinique range, on a try me offer, it was a large chef's knife and had a funky irredescent coating. On the demo it looked great, but in reality, it was absolutely hopeless, it dragged even cutting a tomato, I tried cutting an onion with it, and again it was a real effort, even giving it a good sharpening didn't help. When I was cutting the onion, I gave up halfway though and used the small global knife that OH had, and it was a breeze....I've since bought him a complete set of Global knives, and they're fantastic..ok, they cost a bomb...but imvho cooks essentials knives, are cr*p knives dressed up as good ones and are a false economy!