Most places I see selling both sell the Izula for $10 to $15 more than becker necker. They are both good neck knives the differences between the two have been mentioned. The becker has a bottle opener/wire cutter if that helps.
Kabar makes great knives but I tend to trust Rat/Rowen more. There are a couple of reasons. Rowen makes all the RC-knives of the same steel. This has advantages. They developed a proprietary heat treat for 1095, they stick to the same recipe across their knives. What works, works. Kabar has a pile of different models and different steel types. That is probably a good thing in a company as big as Kabar. It is also something that complicates production. Easier for a screw up to occur on a given batch. This kind of thing always happens to companies that really diversify their offerings.
That smaller scale of Rowan compared to kabar also translates into a lot of other fit & finish issues. I don't really know how large Rowan is as a company (employees etc), but from what I see they either have very personal attention to QA/QC or personal attention to craftsmanship. So confident are they in this that they offer the RAT CUTLERY Guarantee. That kind of confidence and stand behind of a product only comes with small makers e.g. on parr with Bussekin and custom makers.
No offense to Ethan, who designs superb knives and chooses the right steels. The Beckers can be extremely excellent knives and I've seen some examples, e.g. Cmdr249's BK-9 that are essentially perfectly executed. However, I've also seen a lot of F&F issues reported on BF on the kabar manufactured beckers and rangers. Just little things like scales not flush to the tangs, dings and tool marks on parts of the knife, uneven grinds etc. Then again, if saving $30 or $40 is your main method of choosing a blade, then get used to lower quality F&F. That doesn't necessarily mean the knife will perform any less so. But cosmetics and inspection to eliminate cosmetic issues costs a lot and that translates into product price.
Hope you enjoy your knife.
