SOG Specialty Knives & Tools S44-N Pocket PowerPlier
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of SOG Specialty Knives & Tools S44-N Pocket PowerPlier
Customer Review: yet another multi-tool.
Summary: 2 Stars
Several years ago, I received as a gift the now discontinued SOG S23 ToolClip, which had flaws of its own (serrated knife, file and flat-head screw driver on a single non-locking blade? what could possibly go wrong?), but it had the best set of pliars on a multi-tool at the time, so I liked it. After two of the lock-springs broke, I sent it in for warranty repair and received the S44 PowerPliers as a replacement. To SOGs credit, I got the replacement less than a week from the time I mailed it, no questions asked. To SOGs discredit, they replaced my discontinued $90 specialty multitool with a $50 generic multitool. Oh well.
As for the knife itself:
* Main blade: seems to flex more than I would like or expect. It's sharp, but looks fragile. I don't think it would take much torque to snap it. But since it's non-locking, you probably aren't gonna want to use it for much than trivial tasks anyway. At least it will be good for slicing cheese when I go camping.
* Can opener: ...is a can opener. Not much more to say than that.
* Awl: who the hell uses these things? There are so many blades that would be so much more useful. But as another review mentions, the (non-locking) blade faces the wrong direction, so if you put any force on it at all, it will close on your hand. Exciting!
* Phillips head: this looks like the most promising blade on the thing. Right size, reasonable length shaft, so you can actually reach a recessed screw, and looks sturdy. Again, locking would have been better than non-locking.
* Bottle opener/flat head: expect it to take a couple tries to get a bottle open, but it should eventually do the job. As for the driver... well, all flat head screwdrivers suck. Can't blame SOG for that.
* File/other flat head: looks decent. it seems like its a harder steel than the main blade, so hopefully it wont snap if you try to pry something with it.
* The Pliars: These are one of the better features of the whole multitool. The teeth mesh nicely and the geared down ratio gives you a pretty good grip on things. The wire-cutter is shrunk back to a pretty small size and is probably not ideal. Some sort of spring-loading so you could easily open and close the pliars with one hand would be nice, but thats not the case.
Over all, I would say think of the S44 as a glorified set of needle-nosed pliars. Its worth having around, but I'd gladly trade mine for a Leatherman Wave, and in all honesty, I expect I'll get a lot more use out of my Leatherman Squirt.