And - learn to sharpen it The place where I bought my knife offered a sharpening class and sold stones. It’s meditative to sharpen, keeps your knife in good c

And - learn to sharpen it The place where I bought my knife offered a sharpening class and sold stones. It’s meditative to sharpen, keeps your knife in good condition (vs mechanized commercial sharpeners) and saves money (vs outsourcing it). But I don’t see these classes offered much. There are good tutorials on YouTube, if that works for you. I’ll also say, “big” is not so important past a certain point. I have a 10 and am generally very happy with it but you do need to clear more space /above/ your cutting board the longer your blade is. And if someone is buying their first chefs knife they generally (as you correctly note!) will want a larger cutting board than they likely have now. So having a super sized blade (vs a more reasonable 8) amplifies the extent you will need to learn to tidy up and clear space before and while prepping (chopping).