A couple months ago, a shady company I no longer have dealings with sent me a box of knives, and lately I’ve been trying to work through my review backlog, so this is a review for the Ganzo G720. You can find the full review here on my blog.
Description: This is a very large EDC pocket knife, one of the largest and heaviest I’ve held in my hands. It ticks all the check boxes: G10 scales, axis style lock, tip-up deep carry clip, and even what looks like a glass breaker on the butt of the knife which also serves as the mounting screw for the clip. The steel is 440C Chinese steel, with a slightly harder steel than 8Cr13MoV. And this model has steel in abundance at over 7 ounces!
Below you can see this is a large knife. I’ve always thought the Spyderco Tenacious was big, but this dwarfs even the Tenacious and even the G704, which is also a large knife.
Construction: This is a well built knife, though my sample came with an edge that wasn’t ground very well, which contributed to the nick my friend put in the edge. But other than that, this knife is well constructed—it’s a tank. It’s a good design and good implementation. The G10 material is well done and everything about this sample looks solid.
Blade: My friend is a martial artist, and he took an instant liking to this knife. But after a few minutes of playing with it, he had already taken a nick out of the blade with a knife strike to a wood post. Chinese steel is a bit soft for that level of abuse, but if the edge was ground right, it might not have rolled the edge and made a nick, and I would be reporting how much abuse it stood up to. But I can’t really fault the knife for the ridiculous abuse my friend put it through.
Notice below that the blade on my review sample is perfectly centered. This is one of my pet peeves, so I appreciate their attention to detail.
Clip: Ganzo really gets clips. The G720 has a deep carry clip that is configured tip-up right out of the box. They understand what enthusiasts want. But it gets even better, because the clip and screws look to be of decent quality, which is even rare on knives costing several times more. Though it can’t be configured for tip-down carry due to the clip being mounted to the end of the handle, it can be moved to left-hand carry at least.
Lock: This model features an axis-style lock. It’s well made and solid, but it’s a little too solid. It’s very stiff to move the lock to open or close the knife. I’ve been told by a couple people that it takes some time to break in, but it still seems a little excessive. But other than that, it locks up fine.
Conclusions: Did I mention this thing is huge? It’s almost a half pound, as you can see below. It’s way to big for me to EDC, but my friend really likes it. It was hard getting it back from him long enough to take photos of. He said the lock is getting a little easier. All I know is that it hurt my hand after a few minutes of playing with the lock. But I know lots of guys that like heavier knives, like the Kershaw Swerve.
All things considered, this seems to be a very good value for 17 bucks, as long as you like your pocket knives on the gigantic side. If you do, then you will like this knife.
