Knife was shipped quick and I asked for the knife to be inspected. Especially since I noticed I had bought the last one. It still arrived very speedily! White Mountain is awesome!

Comfortable and grippy in hand, solid construction, even grind, perfect centering and no blade play in any direction. It's also thin enough behind the edge that it cuts well without being too fragile. This is my first Benchmade and one thing I really like about it is that it makes these mechanical noises. The axis lock clicks and the blade goes "shwwwwp!" when you open it. It's just really satisfying.

It's not the sliciest knife in the world, but then it's not supposed to be. This is a great knife for cutting heavy abrasive materials like rope, carpet, nylon, etc.

Some critiques:

1. Pocket clip. I don't care that it's not deep carry. My issue is with the bend at the end. It's not bent enough to get it into your pocket easily and requires either a lot of fidgeting or one hand to hold your pocket up and another to push the knife down. It's also very flat, which eliminates hot spots but gives your fingers less to grab onto when opening and closing. It's enough, but could be better.

2. Blade coating. It's done well, but it's Cerakote. DLC is smoother, thinner and tougher and on a $200 knife that's what they should be using.

3. Thumb studs. They work great for rolling the blade out, not so much for flicking. My thumb slips off half the time and the blade only partially opens. Gimped thumb studs would've probably been better, but it's okay. I'm not going to be doing much flicking, anyway.

4. Not a good knife for gloved hands. The slippery little thumb studs, the less than stellar pocket clip and to a lesser degree the axis lock studs all come together to make this not an especially glove friendly knife.

FINAL VERDICT: Worth every penny as long as you don't expect laser-like slicing performance or wear gloves a lot.

Fantastic knife overall. Like so many others I was worried about the blade being all jacked up on arrival, but it was fine. Dead center, no play or lock rock and just the right amount of tension. Very comfortable in hand, stiff and solid (unlike the Bugout), good grind and shave sharp.

Few things I'm not crazy about:

1. The thumb stud is small and slippery. You can roll the blade out fine, but my thumb slips off half the time I try to flick it. I don't care. I'm going to roll it out 99% of the time anyway, but it is a thing that happens.

2. The pocket clip. I'm fine with it not being deep carry. My problem is the turn up at the end. It's not turned up enough to grab your pocket easily and requires either two hands or a lot of fidgeting to get it hooked on and into your pocket. Zero hot spots, though.

3. The coating. It's very well done, but DLC is far superior to Cerakote. DLC is slicker, tougher and thinner, but Benchmade uses Cerakote on $200 knives where Spyderco uses DLC on $150 knives. You can feel Cerakote dragging through whatever you're cutting, not so with DLC. It's a trivial thing, really, and shouldn't stop you from making the buy, but still, for the money they should've used superior DLC.

All that said, nothing is perfect and I'm nit picky. At the end of the day it's a thoroughly awesome, rock solid cutting tool that I'm going to abuse the crap out of with every confidence.

Beautiful handle design, great blade. Almost too beautiful to use in muddy, dirty conditions. Though I'm sure it can handle it just fine. Knife came centered, balanced grind and broke in after a few days of use and a little nano oil.
Thank you White Mountain for the prompt shipping, as usual. Wholeheartedly reccomend it!