What is your experience with cheap knives from amazon or others? There are a lot of sub $50 knives there with mostly positive reviews. Are they actually good? Or do you have better cheap options that are not sponsored by amazon? I see brands on there like Lothar or Bergkvist. They actually have decent websites on their own, so I don’t know if they are actually that amazon trash or a decent budget brand.
They vary wildly.
I personally don’t like liner locks any “lower” than CRKT range, I’m a big fan of the “AXIS” lock that Benchmade created like 25 years ago. Just got a GANZO with a robust AXIS lock for like $25, it’s my first one from them. I’m so impressed by the first one it can only go down from here. Just last night I received a Kizer branded $70 fixed blade knife ostensibly made from D2 steel and from my initial inspection it looks great. Nice hollow grind, decent finishing, well textured micarta handle. I bought it to have a fixed blade I can “conceal” and stay legal (3.5in max blade length for concealed knife in my area, that includes knives “concealed” in my pocket)
If you don’t have experience sharpening knives, go ahead and get a cheapie and scratch that blade up before you buy a $150 Benchmade, for sure. Hell, there was recently a $10 knife at WalMart for a minute that sent all the knife nerds into a tizzy because it was such a good deal. I missed out on it.
Here’s that WalMart knife:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/23991153
I would have never considered that Ozark Trail would put out a quality knife had I not seen that post.