SOG Aegis "Review"

Voodew

Voodew

Joined
Jun 16, 2013
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199
Last night while surfing the web I stumbled upon a deal at my local hunting store that I (being the knife addict that I am) couldn't pass up. The store was selling the SOG Aegis for $40, so today I high tailed it over there and picked me up one.

I am EXTREMELY picky about knives I purchase, if one thing ends up bothering me about the knife, I usually end up returning it. This is why I'm usually prejudice against "low" end knives.

It's a different story with the SOG Aegis. I absolutely love this knife. The ergonomics of the handle are nothing short of perfect. It has a perfect finger choil with awesome jimping (if that's how you spell it) near the tail end of the blade and a nice belly at the end of the handle that give your last 3 fingers a perfect place to get a sturdy grip. The jimping on the sides and top of the handle also add to the great purchase your hands get on this blade.

The blade is full flat ground and makes this knife an excellent slicer. I am a huge fan of full flat grind on blades and the edge I put on this one with the spyderco sharpmaker will shave the pubes off a fly. I can't review the edge retention on SOG's AUS-8 steel because I honestly have no experience with it. Maybe I'll save that for a later review. Even if the edge retention turns out to be sub par, I won't be too disappointed because it was crazy easy and quick to put a razor edge on her.

The assisted opening opens with a satisfying slam. Nice and fast, super responsive. My favorite assisted blade I've handled by a country mile.

Altogether I am more than happy with my purchase and would recommend this knife to anybody. I hope this rookie attempt at a knife review will help anybody who is interested in, or looking to purchase this knife.
 
I like my Aegis, light for it's size, easy to get real sharp, slices well. Handy EDC folder.
Doesn't get carried as much now as I have acquired quite a few folders. But it still gets a day out now and then.

Gotta say though, the pivot needs lubrication fairly regularly to keep it from becoming sticky and slow to open, much more so than my other AO folders need.

Thing is, even when well lubed it still doesn't open with anything like the authoritative 'thwack' of, for example, the 581.
I mean no disrespect to the Aegis when I say this, 'cos as I said I like the knife, within the context of its intended purpose.
But after owning some good Benchmade and Kershaw AO's, every time I deploy the Aegis the opening action of it keeps bringing the word 'soggy' to mind.
Ban pun I know, but it just happens to be there.
 
I a fan of SOG generally, and the Aegis and mini Aegis specifically. Love the deep clip, the hand feel, blade shape and assisted opener feature. These knives do have a little bit of a cheapy feel, and are not known for tight lockup, but if you can get past it, they can really rock. The size to weight ration on them is also impressive.
 
jimping looks like it would murder your thumb, nice pocket clip though...

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I like the blade shape of the Aegis and don't mind AUS8 in budget knives, but those I've handled always had a bit of blade play. Some of my folders have developed a tiny amount of play after years of use, that's fine. A wobbly blade right out of the box is not.
 
Some time ago I got a super good deal on a few Sog Aegis Tanto's on a close out sale. I gifted them to friends and to date I've gotten nothing but very good feedback from the people I gave one to and it's been a couple of years now at least.

I personally liked it very much in hand. Light weight, good ergo's, loved the blade design. Pretty much everything about it gave me a positive impression.

Only thing for me was I'm not crazy about AO in general and prefer a slightly larger blade but my impression of the Sog Aegis Tanto is definitely a very positive one and from what I'm hearing from my friends that I gave one to, the Aegis seems to be performing and holding up very well in use.
 
I wasn't impressed with the mini Aegis. It has bladeplay in both directions. The unlined handle feels super cheap and I'm a fan of polymer handles such as used by Spyderco and Cold Steel which are lined with steel or aluminum. The only good thing about it is the blade stock is thin and ground to a thin edge.
 
I hate to say it as well, but I really dig sog too. Love the looks of the aegis. The flash 2 is one of my most carried knives due to such a good weight/size ratio and their pocket clip design is my favorite followed by spydies wire clip. Mine has had a little blade play from the get go, but it's tough as nails. As far as the cheap plastic handles, it's tougher than the blade usually. Dads sogzilla was left by accident on the blast site at the rock quarry. Then after it was loaded with rock rubble (after going thru the blast),and ran thru a rock crusher, it was picked up by a magnet off the conveyor belt before it got to the lime mill. The Blade was snapped off since he left it open, but the handle was surprisingly in tact. We were all in shock see it turn up after he lost it, and in more shock to see the remains.
 
Well the price was right anyways. I will have dig the one that I have out again and have another look at it.
 
Back when I was first getting into knives, I was checking out some YouTube videos. Saw one from our friend nutn and boy did he love it! I bought one. It's sitting on the desk right in front of me next to a ZT0801. Surprisingly, dimensions are nearly identical to the 0801. Granted the 0801 is at least 3X the price. The Aegis is a good, budget, beater blade. It's lightweight, and SOG has a great deep pocket carry clip on it. Mine has a little wiggle up/down and sideways. Of course the plastic handles make it feel somewhat chintzy. But heck, for a $50 - $60 knife, why not? (did I mention the ZT 0801?)
 
No offense to SOG fans, but the think the SAT is a busted design literally. I've had both the Blink and the Aegis in the past. Both springs broke. Lockup on the Aegis was crappy...blade play in both dimensions...and that dumb safety lock they put on their knives only tells me they are protecting themselves from liability because the lockups on their knives is so suspect. Just my opinion, mind you.
 
I bought two of the Aegis models after I saw Nutn's review. Short story: BIG disappointment - both were absolutely horrible on blade centering -- they were both so far off-center, that they rubbed/scraped on the inside of the scales (enough to start rubbing the black coating off the blade!). I returned them both and didn't even want replacements sent. They were so bad, I would have been embarrassed to send them out to anyone. What's worse is that it was TWO of them!! Double yikes!!

No more SOG's for me -- thanks, but no thanks.
 
The Aegis was one of my most disliked knives i've ever purchased. I think I paid about $60-70 three years ago. I think for $25-35 this knife is justifiable, but for what I paid for it... it definitely wasn't.

I didn't like how it had a hollow plastic feeling handle like the BM Griptillian. The blade steel wasn't very good and wouldn't hold an edge, it had blade play in all directions and the black paint was rubbing within a couple of weeks. In my camo version, the camo design print was misaligned and overlapping the other colors which didn't look good. Lastly I wasn't a fan off the spring assisted mechanism along with the safety switch.

The sad thing is that fundamentally it could have been a great knife - it has good agros, nice blade shape, ect.... but the materials used, hallow feeling and quality control made this a pass for me. It just didn't feel like a knife I could trust; it simply felt like a toy.

I ended up giving it to my buddy for free.

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Nice review OP. If you can get them for a decent price, SOGs can make excellent assisted open knives at relatively low cost. Never had an Aegis, but I've had several Flash's and a Trident and after some pivot tweaking none of them had any significant blade play and still quickly snapped out. The one exception was one aluminum handled Flash 1 where I couldn't get rid of all the play. They stayed like that for quite a while too- if I constantly carried the blade I might have to readjust the pivot about once a month.
It's possible people could overstating the blade play issue. I was able to completely eliminate perceivable blade play and keep it that way in 5 out of 6 SOG knives I had.
 
Indoril, I can assure you I am not overstating the lockup issues with the Aegis. It was simply atrocious...something I'd expect from a pawn shop $5.00 switchblade. And...as another poster mentioned, the materials are cheap. cheap. cheap. Plasticky Zytel scales, a low end steel that doesnt hold an edge worth a hoot (AUS 8), and that %$#&^% wretched safety. In order to eliminate the up and down play, I had to adjust the tension so much I couldn't deploy the blade without gouging my thumb in half, and even then, it still wobbled side to side to a drunken sailor. Junk. Absolute junk. So I backed the tension off so I could at least deploy the blade easily enough, and ka-zoom! ... two weeks later, the spring busted on me. I threw the whole thing in the garbage, where it belonged.
 
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