I've purchased a few stones, Sharp Pebble 400/1000 which I received with this, and a Chosera 3000 which is on the way. My experience with stones is limited to cheap crap from hardware stores and a nice unknown old school 1x1x6 ish hand me down from my grandfather (which isn't flat by any means). Needless to say IDK where the cheap one's went (trash I assume) and the work horse was my possibly 800 grit ish water stone hand me down. I have every day carry knives that I use... most would say abuse... and need more aggressive grit, and more than I wanted to do with this old stone. I have a field bag and now a nice THAWK axe I got for Christmas and thought I wanted a nice travel stone. This is it, I haven't received my Chosera yet, but I can say to date right now this Bruks is the nicest stone I've ever purchased. I wouldn't use this without water, I soaked mine (don't know if that's really bad for this stone or not) and had to keep adding water to the surface to keep water on top. It just seemed to leak right through (on the bench), was better when i got smart and put the rubber cap on the other side. Physically feels very nice both dry and wet, and the feed back is very nice with water on top and even when it has soaked in. Works great when used the way it was designed to, in your hand and dragging it along an axe. Though I am still learning that technique. Over all first impressions are that it's very high quality and no noticeable wear after a few sharpenings. Clear case of you get what you pay for.