I've been looking for a good quality knife set that is also good value. I finally landed on Cangshan, who seems to be a fairly new player to the market.
Their products are very well reviewed by amazon buyers and youtubers, they come with a lifetime warranty and to my surprise the RRP pricing seems to be a lot lower here in Australia compared to their listing on USA (I assume they'll go up once they get a bigger market share). On top of that they are also running a 50% Mothers Day sale at the moment.
As for the knives they offer, they seem to have a good range between Japanese steel, German steel and Swedish Steel (Made by Sandvik).
My personal pick would be the TC series, mainly due to the edge retention and robustness, I currently have Japanese steel Global knives and think while they are great knives they are easy to chip and the edge retention could be better. From the brief research I've done the Sandvik steel seems to the superior steel to the German and Japanese steels as they are supposed to have better edge retention than both and atleast as robust as the German steel and definitely more robust than the Japanese steel.
Their TC series (and others have won the Red Dot Design Award and the German Design Award).
The company dispatches locally from Kewdale, WA so shipping should be fairly quick.
They sell singles, knife sets and knife blocks - single TC paring knives are about $12.
I have linked some below but browse the website as there are several styles available in each material.
I think this TC 3 piece knife set should be enough for most people:
https://cangshancutlery.com.au/collections/knife-block-sets/…
But this 8 piece is great value and would be my pick:
https://cangshancutlery.com.au/collections/knife-block-sets/…
Cheaper German knife block ($57.25):
https://cangshancutlery.com.au/products/cangshan-s1-series-1…
All knife blocks:
https://cangshancutlery.com.au/collections/knife-block-sets
All knife sets:
https://cangshancutlery.com.au/collections/knife-sets-collec…
All knife singles:
https://cangshancutlery.com.au/collections/single-piece
Customer service is also great as I had to amend my order and they were happy to help. Good reviews about warranty claims too.
Website states: Despite being made in China, most of the steel used in Cangshan’s knives comes from either Germany or Sweden
Not very confident with the term most but pricing seems good