Mal-Wart sells them for $39.96 - I picked one up this morning.
Great fiddle factor, and nicely made for the most part. I don't care for all the nylon, but the majority of it is just a cover for the plier springs. The safety is nylon and seems somewhat chintzy, but we'll see how it holds up. The blade lock release buttons are also nylon, but they don't bear the entire load. The actual locking is done by a steel bar which is pushed out of the way by the nylon plug. Unfortunately the nylon plug is also what holds it in the locked position so the lock strength is probably equivalent to an average liner lock. If you need a stronger lock than that, your primary cutting tool shouldn't be a multi-tool blade.
The plier head deploys with a nice and crisp OTF action. SHWACK! Resetting them is slightly awkward though. Gerber recommends pushing them against a solid object to load them back into the handle. I've been getting better at smoothly pushing them back in one-handed using the index finger, but if you fiddle with them for a while, you get some nice divots in your fingertips.
NIB the blade is duller than baby pictures, but the scissors are rockin' good. Since the plier head retracts into the handle for OTF action, there is very little room leftover for the other tools- only two blades per handle. Consequently, they've adopted the Victorinox "combo blade" approach and glommed a bunch of separate functions onto two of the blades (see above photo)in a fairly innovative and useful fashion. In general, this seems to work OK, but the phillips screwdriver is fairly lacking. This is probably more of an issue for me than most people - I spent a lot of time getting in and out of computers and electronic equipment so I really need a top notch phillips head.
The locking mechanism for the blades (nylon actuators) uses the same spring that launches the pliers. This makes it noticably more difficult to unlock with the pliers retracted, although it seems to be loosening up with use. The nail nick - actually milled clear through the blade - is large enough to deploy the blade one handed, Spydie style.
While I really like the tool, I think my SOG Switch-pliers will go back into daily rotation as soon as the novelty has worn off. (By that I mean as soon as I've shown it off to everyone I know.) As well as needing a more robust phillips head, I use a file fairly often to deburr case parts.
After seeing these, I'm now anxious for the next logical auto multi-tool development: DA OTF pliers!
Joe
- who wishes profiles showed word count and not post count.
