Believe it or not, the Mangus 53 is a great utility blade. With a fair amount of class. I'm not sure it's a great Bali for flipping and crowd impressing tricks. But at a light 3.5 ounces and possessing a perfect full flat ground D2 clip blade with a strong tip, it's a great cutter. Cardboard cutting and stabbing tests behind my double-wide trailer showed the edge to be durable. I was somewhat surprised to see the D2 discolor so readilly however; consider it to be a high maintenance blade steel and keep it oiled. Upon re-edging, this Mangus 53 took on an offensively sharp edge (shown) and its fine grain responded well to 1000 grit stones (look at that shine). Deployment is slow for me and I generally do not prefer, practice with, or prefer a Balisong for either EDC or tactical use. They're fun to play with and practice some showy knife play but not for serious work when stress is high and motor skills are low. I'll go with a much simpler and faster assisted, manual action, or even automatic tactical blade when things go serious. The looks are killer with the matter finished D2 and the solid OD colored G10 handles. In hand the ergos are squared away and the bottom curved portion fits the hand well. Fit and finish are representative of typically high Benchmade standards. The clip should be blackened but it seems strong enough, attached with two Torx screws. Value is moderate, several favorite competitive options shown. It's another classy EDC from Benchmade <b>...</b>
benchmade
mangus
53
review
nutnfancy
balisong
blade
d2
steel
rust
cardboard
testing
cold
paradox
sog
mini
aegis
microtech
socom
elite
II
automatic
knife
spyderco
caly
3.5
bm
2550
reflex
940
osbourne
axis
model
42
bradley
mayhem
kimura
51
morpho
tnp
folding
