>>2272475Steel use and heat treatment are going to be some of the biggest factors as you get into more expensive knives. Sure handle material and fit and finish generally become more premium as well, but that doesn’t make the biggest functional difference compared to a well designed sub $100 knife, it’s mostly creature comfort.
With the higher end steels and heat treatments though, you get a quantitative difference in how long the knife can hold a keen edge, how well it handles abuse, and other smaller factors such as susceptibility to rust.
My go to /out/ knife is my Bradford Guardian 5.5 in CPM-3v. It is over $200. The knife above it is a SRK in SK-5, I got it for about $35… these knives serve the same basic function and in real world use would perform about the same, you would just have to sharpen the SRK more, and the Bradford cuts a bit better since it’s a bit thinner grind. Ironically I like the sheath on the SRK more, I had a friend make a kydex sheath for the Bradford since I don’t like leather sheaths.
But I still like the Bradford more even though it costs 5-6 times more: it’s cool and I’m dumb and I like knives.
