EDC Keychain Knife Roundup #1: The Ones I've Tried

If you've kept up with my YouTube videos or this blog throughout the years, you'll know I love my small gear. I especially love my tinier, keychain-sized things. They always look so cute, are easy for me to carry, and are generally inexpensive. I've tried a wide variety of keychain knives over the years. I thought it was time that I finally compiled a list of the best and worst ones I've tried. I consider a keychain knife to be around 2" in blade length at the most. There's some that are slightly bigger, and some that are slightly smaller. You can normally tell what is better suited for a keychain. Just so this post doesn't get spammed full of Victorinoxs or other small multitools, I'm only going to be talking about single bladed knives. It'll probably mostly be folders, as I've yet to try many tiny fixed blades. If the knife doesn't come with a clip, I'd also use that as a sign to classify that it's a keychain knife. Since this is my second go at blogging, a lot of the earlier reviews of some of these blades have been deleted. If you'd like to hear more about any of them, check out my Gear Thoughts tab to see if I've done a review on them.

So these are currently the only keychain-sized knives I own. Of all the ones I've tried, these are the only ones that have stuck around. They are the Kershaw Cinder, Spyderco Ladybug, and CRKT Jettison.

The single best keychain knife I've ever tried is the Spyderco Ladybug. No other knife can beat its combination of great ergos, ease of use one-handed, a good steel (VG-10), great quality, etc. I've talked enough about how much I love this knife in all my videos. The thumbhole makes it the easiest to open one-handed of all of these by far. The price of the Ladybugs has risen a lot over the years, despite the fact that nothing as changed about them at all. You can now find them for a little under $40 brand new. I don't really think they're worth that much. I'm sure you can find them used for way less. Still, it's the most impressive keychain knife I've used. I think that's why I have a hard time finding keychain knives that compete with it. It has set the standards so high for me that it's practically impossible for any tiny knife to impress me as much.

These are two more that I've recently tried: the Gerber STL 2.5 and the SOG Centi I. The SOG is a piece of garbage. It is probably the worst $10 I've spent on any piece of gear. I don't mind that it's a slipjoint. However, it takes little to no effort to close. I wouldn't feel safe using it. If you're looking for a small, metal-handled keychain knife, get the Spyderco Honeybee instead. That's a much better example of what these tiny slipjoints should be. It's not made of the nicest materials and feels more like a novelty item. I also really hate that it's a two-finger knife. The ergos suck due to that. It's an awful knife.

The Gerber is actually alright. My two biggest complaints are that it can't be opened one-handed and the titanium-nitride finish feels weird. It's more a matte finish, which is fine, but it has that feeling of nails on a chalkboard. Every time my nails scratch it on accident, I just cringe a little. It's not the end of the world, but I can't say I've seen it on any of the other knives I've tried. This is the bigger version, so it's got a 2.5" blade opposed to the STL 2.0 that has a 2" blade. The STL 2.5 goes for no more than $15, which is a fair price. Oh and the framelock on this one at least is hard to disengage. Other than that, I don't have many other complaints. The ergos are nice and fit my entire hand comfortably. I don't love it, though I do think it's a decent keychain option. It's certainly better than most of the knives you'll see farther down in this post.

photo from Blade HQ

The Cold Steel Micro Recon 1 is one of the other big name keychain knives out there. I've enjoyed a few of the Cold Steels I've tried, but this knife was terrible. I believe they went for around $20 to $25, which is a great price for what you got. It's been discontinued, though I'm sure you can still find it on eBay or other secondhand places. My biggest issue with it was the terrible ergos. I hate two finger knives with a passion. If your hands are on the smaller side, your fingers would be spread out way too wide on the handle. If you've got bigger sausage fingers, I can see why you'd like this knife. For me, it was extremely uncomfortable. Why would you opt for a two-finger knife when there are many other keychain knives out there that can fit at least three fingers in the same handle length? The handle is a similar size to the Ladybug, so it would've been possible to have a three-finger knife instead of the two horrible finger grooves. The thumbstud was hard to use/open one-handed since it was way too close the handle. It was a horrible knife in my opinion. It was neat that it had the Tri-ad lock, but it's unnecessary for such a small knife.

The Boker Keycom was very popular when I was first getting into knives. I liked mine initially, but then it started having a lot of quality issues. I was able to get a replacement from Boker luckily, though it still didn't stand up to the Ladybug. Since it comes with a clip, it's a lot bulkier right of the box. Honestly, if I had thrown it on my keychain, I would have removed the clip. It wasn't the easiest to use one-handed, because it had thumbstuds that were too close to the handle like the Micro Recon. The quality issue was a huge thing for me, so I wouldn't personally recommend it. It is neat that it's one of the smaller clipped knives out there. I feel like Boker discontinued them, but I could be wrong. You can still find them on Blade HQ for about $20 and on Amazon as well.

photo from Knife Center

This is the Kershaw Little Lockback. I probably tried this one 5 years ago for about $10. It was okay, but again, I didn't like that you couldn't open it one-handed. I started to have some quality issues with it too, so it didn't last long in my collection. It wasn't anything special or memorable. If you love Kershaw, maybe try to track one down on eBay or something. Otherwise, there's plenty of keychain knives in production currently that blow this out of the water. I wouldn't recommend it.

The Spyderco Bug line is one of the most infamous keychain knives line out there. I tried the Honeybee and did enjoy it. It wasn't my favorite in the world, but it was a solid knife overall. It's a slipjoint, yet I wasn't ever worried about it closing on my fingers unlike the SOG from the beginning. The detent was surprisingly strong. It really snapped shut with authority. This knife was the perfect size without being too big or small. I couldn't imagine wanting to put the bigger brother, the Grasshopper, on my keys. The Honeybee was perfectly usable, so I wonder how much smaller the tinier Bug really is. The Honeybee goes for about $17 on Blade HQ, which I think is a little high for what you're getting. The steel, 3Cr13MoV, isn't the greatest in today's standard anymore. It's an alright option, but I do think you can do better.

The Kershaw Cinder surprised me a lot. I got mine for less than $10, so I didn't really expect much from it. I've always had a hit or miss experiences with Kershaws. This one is definitely a hit though. The blade is a lot smaller than the others I've mentioned, but you still get that similarly sized handle. My only major complaint is that the scales are black. That's obviously a personal preference of mine, since I love to carry colorful knives. Despite the small size, the ergos are very good. It's super comfortable in the hand. It is neat that it's got the bottle opener as well. For the price, it's definitely worth a look.

The only flipper on this list is the CRKT Jettison. As far as I know, this one of the only keychain-sized production flippers on the market. I wish more companies would do some tiny flippers like this, because they're so cool. The Jettison has such an awesome looking design. I love the wharncliffe blade. They're going for about $22 on Blade HQ at the time that this post is going up. That's a phenomenal deal. The action on mine isn't the best anymore, but that could be since it's been sitting in my Pelican case for a while. The flipper itself is easy to use despite how small this knife is. It's one of my favorite options just because of how different it is.

This is the Byrd Finch 2. I hated it. The quality sucks, it's way heavier than you'd think it'd be, and it just didn't impress me. For $15, it's a fair deal, but it's not a knife I enjoyed using. The thumbhole and G10 scales were nice. Other than that, I don't have much else positive to say about it. Again, you can do better.

I'll also throw the Boker DW-1 and DW-2 in here, since they're pretty small. I don't think they're the best suited for keychain carry, mostly due to the wider handles and the clips. You can take the clips off of course, but they're still on the bulkier side. The DW-1 is the smaller one on the bottom, and I see it as more of a novelty knife. It's way too small to be usable, and you can't really open it one-handed. The DW-2 is similar to the Keycom. These two are in that $20 to $25 range. I don't recommend them personally, but they were alright.

I believe those are most of the keychain knives I've personally tried. I may have left out a couple, but these are some of the popular offerings from the bigger knife companies. I've got another post that'll go along with this one about other keychain knives out there that I haven't gotten the chance to try yet. If none of the knives in this post caught your eye, maybe the upcoming one will give you a few more ideas. I hope this was a good resource about all the major keychain knives out there. My favorite tiny/keychain options would have to be the Spyderco Ladybug, Kershaw Cinder, and the CRKT Jettison. I wouldn't throw the Jettison on my keys, but it is a fun knife to play with. Plus the design looks so cool. Thanks for looking!