Sal and his team done good with this one. I haven't had a chance to test the steel yet, but Spyderco has a great track record with steel treatments.
My Military M390 came with a perfectly centered blade. The lock is perfect. The leading edge of the locking bar carries to 50 percent. The blade lock up is solid. The knife opens smoothly. Very smoothly. My best Military. Fit and finish are excellent.
The edge is sharp and grind is pretty even -- 18 degrees on one side and 16 degrees on the other. It will reprofile to 15/15 easily. The point came very pointy, which is not all that common these days with factory knives.
Besides being a well-made knife with lots of blade, the Military is perfect for fine use. The full flat grind coupled with a narrow shoulder-to-shoulder edge width and a pointy point makes for an incredible slicer and detail cutter.
I compared it to my AFCK in M390. The AFCK is a little heavier and a little thicker. Benchmade did a good job with its M390, and the AFCK is pretty awesome because it has such a narrow edge shoulder width, which is a prime determinant for cutting ability. For comparison:
Military M390: 0.025 shoulder width
AFCK M390: 0.024
Gayle Bradley: 0.023
Sebenza: 0.017
All these knives are excellent slicers with narrow shoulder widths. The Sebenza is also backed by a hollow grind blade, so it's in a category of its own. The Gayle Bradley also has a hollow grind blade, but it's not as high as the Sebenza. The Military's full flat grind is excellent. The AFCK is a sabre grind. It's a little difficult to compare the AFCK to the Military because the Military has an advantage in the FFG, but the AFCK blade stock is slightly thinner. However, the distal taper is is different between the two, so I'm guessing the Military and AFCK are very close.
The Military carries better than the AFCK, but it's close. I like the axis lock better, but the Military is so smooth that it doesn't really matter that much. I know with the Military M4 a state-of-the-art framelock/RIL was used, but I never felt that the liner lock on the Military was a weakness.
The ergos on the Miliary and the AFCK are similar. I like the AFCK a bit more because of the thicker handle. And I like the sculpted G10 scales better. But the Military carries better and is lighter. It's a wash. I like both the Military and AFCK better for ergos than the Sebenza and a lot more than the GB.
M390 is my favorite EDC steel. Easy to sharpen. Stainless. Holds a sharp edge extremely well. I'm not sure about toughness, but it's more than enough for an EDC.
Mostly, I'm just really, really happy with the new Military. Get one if you can. I'm almost ready to forgive Sal for dropping the original Manix.