As a fan of the Beretta 92F handgun, I’ve owned two Beretta-badged knives that were product tie-ins to this knife. The first was small to medium-sized folder with a styled 9mm bullet badge in the handle, which was so sharp it badly cut a friend of mine in college (he lost so much blood that he was pale when we found him, and we tracked him across campus based on that blood trail). I sold that knife (and later regretted that decision) but, years later, decided once more to purchase a Beretta 92 tie-in blade. The knife you see here was the result of that search.
This version of the Beretta 92 knife is a surprisingly heavy-weight linerlock with a stylized, Americanized-tanto blade of Seki City AUS-8 steel. The black coating on the blade covers only the unbeveled portion of this broad piece of steel; the rest is polished and deeply ground to meet the [different] angle of the cutting edge (which is ground on both sides). The blade is roughly three and a half inches long, while overall length is roughly eight inches. The handle is Zytel (plastic).
The knife was extremely sharp out of the box, cut well, penetrated reasonably well (the blade exhibits a distal taper thanks to the broad, uncoated secondary grind), and didn’t do too badly in slashing and cutting a variety of test media (ranging from cardboard to cloth) despite the fact that there is no true “belly” to the knife. This is because, while it is an Americanized tanto, the point between the two edges is not as severe as on some. It is less useful for scoring, as a result, but better for cutting through the sweep of the edge.
The blade opens smoothly and locks open positively. There is no blade play. A single removable, graduated thumb stud is affixed to the blade with a small Phillips-head screw. The liner engages the blade tang fully and to the left of the tang, leaving some room for wear.
The handle, stylized to look like the grip of a Beretta 92F, is comfortably textured and ergonomically curved. It provides a good grip despite the fact that the spine and its obverse are somewhat smooth. The shape of the handle forms a very brief integral guard of sorts. The sweep of the handle on top, just aft of the blade, forms a natural thumb ramp. I wish this had thumb grooves. There is also a lanyard hole in the handle.
The metal pocket clip is broad but skeletonized. It had good tension out of the box and is removable (Torx fasteners hold it to the handle). It is suitable for right-hand, tip-down use only.
This knife occupies a niche somewhere between “novelty blade” and “tactical knife,” must closer to the latter than to the former. It is solid, hefty, and exhibits good fit and finish, with a businesslike look that is shared by the handgun for which it is named. Unless you’re a fan of the Beretta 92F pistol I suppose I don’t really see why you’d need this knife, but I could readily see why you might want one egardless.