I almost didn't buy this set because I figured I'd have no use for a gimmicky curved knife and a serrated blade, I only wanted the normal paring knife, but the set was only a little bit more expensive than an individual paring knife. As it turns out I use the curved knife more than any other knife I own, and the serrated one more than the normal paring knife- I was fully prepared to hide those two knives in the back of my drawer and never look at them again, but they are really great. I'm sure you can get better knives somewhere, but not at anything remotely close to this price. I am pretty picky about knives, and Forschner's are definitely the best I have used. I also strongly recommend the 8 inch chefs knife. I guess the best way to sum up my feelings about these (and the 8 inch chef's knife) is that I would have happily paid 4 or 5 times what they cost.

The blades are nice but I find the handles are a bit petite for my hands - something more along the lines of the girth of the fibrox handles on the Victorinox Chef's knife would have been appreciated.

For about $10 you can have three great knives, one of which was rated by America's Test Kitchen as best paring knife hands down regardless of price. I use really just the paring knife as it is easy to use in many small tasks and is light and flexible. at around $4-5 a piece separately you are basically getting a free knife with purchase of two.

As for the wavy edge and the birds beak i do not really use that often. For fruit I sometimes use the birds beak parer but generally find the straight edge easier to use.

This set is not perfect though, the handles are not the same type of grippy fibrox used in the larger kitchen knives, I really liked that feature like in the chef's knife when things got wet or oily. another thing, though the knives were sharp out of the box, the thinness of the metal, which gives it flexibility, creates an edge that gets worn easily, for the straight knife thats not much of a problem, but for the other two sharpening I imagine would be a hassle. Then again you can always just get another set as they are priced so low.

They actually look as cheap as from the 99cent store, but they really ARE a quality product! And the very best part....THEY'RE NOT FROM CHINA! They are well-made in Switzerland. It's the handles that make them look cheap...just as others have said. But we don't buy this kind of knife for what it LOOKS like, but rather how easy it makes our time in the kitchen, right? An excellent bargain for a very good product. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

The standard paring knife included here is wonderful. It's thin, lightweight, flexible, and sharp. It slides through vegetables as easily as it does through butter. It neatly conforms to the contours of what you're cutting, if you so desire. I cored some tomatoes last night, and didn't have any issues. Great, too, for mincing garlic.

Honestly, I haven't really found much use for the other two knives in this package, as they're specialty knives, and I don't do a whole lot of the peeling which they're useful for. The normal paring knife is fine for most non-peeling sorts of tasks.

But, for $10, you're not going to find a better paring knife. The only way you're going to get something better is to spend four or five times as much, and I'd rather just buy a new one of these every few years (under heavy use). (As another reviewer said, they're quite thin, so sharpening would be a pain -- I haven't had to do so, yet.)