In the past, I looked at the Malga 6, which I found mostly silly with a nice blade. The Malga 5 is a much better setup for a knife for how I want to use a knife. Now, however, we have Magnacut. Oh my.
Specs and Such
Take a Victorinox, strip it down, upgrade the materials, and out you get the MKM Malga series of knives. This ‘5’ variant has five tools: Knife, small serrated knife, scissors, saw, and a Phillips driver. Only the primary knife blade is labeled as Magnacut.
As far as tools go, near perfect setup for a camp knife or a hiking knife. (What you want a corkscrew? Nah, screwdriver, I drink whiskey.) I love Magnacut, so I am quite happy about that being the steel choice here.
The downside: this knife is beastly. It’s large in every facet and weighs in at (on my scale) 104g. It’s not light by any means.
Use
The blade(s) on this is fantastic. It’s a classic Swiss Army knife shape, but with a really high end steel. It’s a big blade too, so there’s plenty to work with. The serrated blade seemed like an odd choice for me at first, but then I found it’s a gem for cutting cordage — so I’m sold on that.
There’s two big issues with this knife, both are a carry over from the Malga 6:
- This is a larger and heavier knife. It mostly sucks to carry in your pocket because of this.
- While the main blade is easy to open, the other tools have far too much tension on them, and feel like they are going to break/tear my nails when I try to open them. Especially the scissors.
That’s a huge issue for me: it’s not easy to carry this, and the tools are not nearly as accessible has a proper Swiss Army knife’s are. Yikes.
That said all of the tools themselves are executed well. It’s a very good mix of tools, and an all around stout package.
Overall
As with the Malga 6, this knife is a bit of a miss. It’s good, but it’s not good enough to put in my carry rotation. However, the tools on the Malga 5 are good enough that this knife has found a spot in my hiking bag as my backup knife/tool.
For the price, this is a good offering. I’d love to see a Malga 5 Small, which is about 25% shorter in length.
