The Grand Cheff 270mm wa-gyuto offers the performance of some more expensive wa-gyutos along with more accountability: The blade is actually 270mm long from tip to heel instead of tip to some point well past the heel. Sakai Takayuki didn't look at the traditional handle they were using as a license to cut corners and pass it off as 'tradition,' they chose to push the envelope and give a lot of knife for the money. The handle, by the way, is very comfortable and stylish as any semi-octagonal handle should be. The blade is over 50mm tall at heel allowing for scooping techniques and for more mass to amass atop its thin edge (so that less user-supplied for is needed). It's AEB-L blade steel is a fine-grained steel that provides an ease-of-sharpening and a slight resistance to microchipping that more than offsets a slight loss in wear-resistance it has compared to some of the steels in other, more expensive wa-gyutos. It acts like carbon only without all the reactivity. With a medium grit King waterstone, a Naniwa green aoto, and a Hand American leather strop loaded with Hand American's 0.5µ diamond spray (all available from Chef Knives To Go), its inner cutting demon with laser-like eyes is quickly and ecstatically released. Another thing about the Grand Cheff wa-gyuto is that its blade profile is different from the western-style Grand Cheff gyuto. Where the western Grand Cheff gyuto is narrower and has a little more curve in its edge than a standard gyuto, the Grand Cheff wa-gyuto is taller and has just a wee little bit less curve than a standard gyuto. Two different beasts; each different from the 'standard' of their kind; each different from each other; and yet both are so much fun to use. Whether using a Grand Cheff wa-gyuto or Grand Cheff western gyuto, you can't go wrong. Well, maybe, but it would take so much planning and effort to go wrong, that going wrong wouldn't be worth it.
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