Every once in a while I feel like somebody's calling me out. For instance, with this: QSP make a knife called the "Penguin." Could anything else have me written all over it in bigger letters?

Well, okay, it could have been a balisong. But it's not, so it seems thus far if you want a Spheniscidae-adjacent bali then mine is still your only option. But still, I think I was my most solemn duty to buy one of these so I can squawk all about it. You know how it is.

QSP seem to be a newish player on the market and up until now, to be honest, I'd never looked at them that hard. They're another quasi-faceless Chinese manufacturer attempting to cast off their homeland's reputation for low-rent flea market grade cutlery, perhaps so much so that they posit "QSP" stands for "Quality, Service, Price." Well, actually their about us blurb is rather long-winded but still short on actual useful details, and repeats the phrase "Better Knife, Better Life" instead, suspiciously frequently. The word on the street is that they might be trying to position themselves as the next CJRB or Civivi. That remains to be seen.

For some reason it seems that almost all of their models are named after animals. For its part, the Penguin comes in a frankly absurd number of combinations of action types, handle scale materials, and blade finishes. I got the "Glyde Lock" variant in green and with a bare steel rather than coated blade, which is naturally the objectively correct choice for anyone who wants to spend no more than $49 on it. It must be said that it's one of the less excitingly expensive options while managing not to be yet another boring liner lock. The Penguin as a whole is available in both frame and liner lock incarnations, plus a button lock version, and with large and small variants of some types. It's all a bit much to keep track of, if we're honest.

The Penguin comes in a nice lift-off presentation box that's not much bigger than the knife itself.

These guys sure know how to make a good first impression, though. This thing comes with not one but two penguin stickers inside the box. I'll happily accept a bribe like that any day of the week. Alas, the stickers are the only freebies I got because I paid for this one with my own money.

For some reason they also include a card with the specifications of the knife you now already own, as if that's going to help your purchasing decision any. I notice the various options checkboxes on mine are resolutely unchecked. I don't know what's up with that. The rear briefly outlines QSP's alleged limited lifetime warranty, which as usual seems to disclaim pretty much everything and explicitly also only covers the first owner. It also calls out being "taken apart or reassembled" as invalidating it, which as we all know means my personal example will remain fully covered only as long as nobody at QSP manages to read this column. No mention of reassembling it incorrectly, mind you; presumably just taking it apart and putting it back together at all is enough to do it.

What a load of krill.

The Penguin is a mid size, EDC oriented folder that's 4-1/16" long closed and 7" precisely when it's open. It's got a 3" long blade if we stick with our usual method of measuring from the forwardmost point on the handle, with a sheepsfoot profile and about 2-13/16" of usable edge. There's no ricasso so the sharpened part goes all the way from tip to root, ending in what amounts to a choil at the base which interfaces with the stop pin inside the knife. The blade's 14C28N, i.e. the current king of non-crucible steels, so it ought to be a halfway decent performer as well.

It weighs 83.5 grams or 2.94 ounces in this incarnation, including its injection molded fiber reinforced nylon scales. You can get these with aluminum or carbon fiber or with copper plating, or the gods alone know what all else, and undoubtedly those all have slightly different weights. No word on a black one with a white blade. What a combination to overlook, really.

The handles are 0.478" thick not including the protruding lock toggles, or 0.564" with. Including the clip the whole thing is 0.650", so it's not exactly wafer thin.

It's got has a decent heft in the hand, and the center of gravity is pretty much right around where the lock is, which is nice. It's neither front nor tail heavy, and has a pleasingly grippy texture that manages to not be sharp or annoyingly raspy in the process. I can confidently report that no part of it is made out of rubber, nor soft-touch anything. If nothing else at least it won't ever disintegrate into goo in storage and you'll never find it unexpectedly glued to your pants.

The Penguin's Glyde Lock is yet another take on the crossbar/Axis lock, with its major contribution being the elongated slider thingy in place of the usual round button jutting out. The lock's pretty easy to find and works the usual way, sliding to the rear to release the blade.

It's also got this groovy laser engraved flush fitting pivot screw head, which is an absolute must if you're going to show off to your friends that you're a top-shelf EDC bro and not just some uncultured chump who buys all his pocketknives from Walmart. Not that I'd know, or anything.

The other perk you get for going with the Glyde trim level is ceramic ball bearing pivots, so this Penguin's got a nice solid pivot with low-friction feel. The blade is 0.120" thick at the spine and thus has a fair amount of heft to it compared to, just for purest sake of argument, something like a Benchmade Bugout. So the Penguin is a champion at doing the Axis Flick trick, if that's what you're into — and you'd better believe that I am. What with the elongated easy to grab lock button and effortless pivot action, it's like it was made for it.

If, for some damn silly reason, you would prefer that your Penguin not have ball bearing pivots, you can purchase an aftermarket kit of Teflon and bronze washers to replace these. QSP themselves remain silent on the matter but the wisdom of the Intertubes indicates that this is favorable for people who work in exceptionally gritty environments. I propose that in that case, rather than sandblasting your nice knife on a regular basis, you might just want to invest in a cheaper boxcutter instead. But what do I know?

The Penguin only looks like another one of those damned all-composite wunderkinds from the outside. It does indeed have full length steel liners concealed and encapsulated within its scales, if that helps you sleep better at night. That makes it a damn sight more rigid than the current crop of all-plastic EDC darlings, calling out the aforementioned Bugout especially. It's also just a shade over a quarter of the price of the latter, as well, which helps.

I really like the Penguin's clip.

Actually, no. Back up a bit. I really like that QSP have done with the Penguin's clip, which is a different story. The clip itself is just about average, and as is apparently all the range these days comes too tight as it is out of the box. It grabs just a shade too hard for a clean draw off of most fabrics, which to be fair can be fixed in a jiffy by anyone with moderate cojones and a willingness to tweak it slightly with a pair of pliers.

What I really like about the clip is how it's inset to be flush with the scales where it's mounted. And QSP didn't do a halfassed job with this, either. The screw heads themselves are also countersunk into the clip, so there's nothing poking out to snag. Other manufacturers could learn a lot from this. Other manufacturers who shall remain nameless, and charge a lot more for their knives.

The clip is reversible, albeit with only tip up carry provided, but these absolute Chads have also gone on and installed a shiny steel filler in the pocket where the clip would go on the opposite side, so you don't wind up with a stupid divot in the scale on whichever side it's not installed on. I know, I know, that's like three cents worth of metal getting me all excited like this, but now that I've seen it I can't fathom why other makers who have inset clips don't seem to bother to do this.

And it makes it look cool. Something to balance out that big shiny pivot screw, but on the other end of the handle. You have to look cool if you're a penguin. There's no other way.

You also get a lanyard hole down there if you're the type of person who cares about that sort of thing.

I like the Penguin's size. The sheepsfoot blade is not everyone's cup of tea, and if we're putting our cards on the table I'll admit that I usually prefer something with more of a drop point, myself. But the Penguin's blade profile does at least do one thing, which is make it look a lot more like a peaceful utility tool and not a tactical combat implement. It's also right at the 3" blade length limit which is in force in most locales, which means you ought to be able to carry this pretty much anywhere. So that's nice, and also not something you can say about the OG sized Bugout, technically.

(So naturally it's shown here with a Tactical Combat Implement, just because. Neener, neener, neener, et. cetera.)

The Penguin is quite acceptably sharp out of the box. I still don't have a rigorous way of assessing this yet, but it cleanly deals with a standard Post-It with no trouble.

I'm thus a little disappointed to see that its edge grind is noticeably off true from the factory. It seems like this is still largely inescapable in sub-$100 knives, even here in the future. QSP make a lot of noise about craftsmanship and precision and so on and so forth, but it looks like they missed this particular little bit right here.

Oh well. I have an imposing array of diamond stones and I'm not afraid to use them.

Otherwise, the grind is pretty good. It's nice and fine, and they didn't have to employ any stupid microbeveling tricks to ensure it actually wound up with a functional edge on it.

I'm quite fond of the stonewash tumbled finish on the Penguin's flats, but it's a shame this was done before rather than after the taper grind. The taper itself has a satin as-machined finish which is curiously slightly curved and also swept towards the rear, even though the taper itself seems to be flat. It's not unattractive, but having the tumbled finish only on the dinky spine section of the blade makes it look a bit cheap. Which, to be fair, I guess it kind of is.

Unlike a lot of cheap knives, though, the Penguin's blade centering is just about perfect. No doubt that's because it's both an Axis and a ball bearing knife, so it's starting out with two major handicaps not present. The pivot is extremely solid and doesn't wiggle one tiny bit, and the lockup is likewise just as solid as any Benchmade I've owned. You can't fault it there.

So, here's the part where I void my warranty.

The lock toggles are made out of the same fiber reinforced stuff as the scales, and they press fit onto the ends of the crossbar in the lock. The undersides are not as pretty as the parts that show, but you won't be looking at them all day anyway. Underneath are the usual Omega style hair springs, which remain captive under the toggles and the scales, but are otherwise easy enough to remove.

It occurs to me that somebody with a 3D printer and a huge predilection for cutlery related nerdery could probably make custom replacement lock toggles for these pretty easily. Now there's something to think about.

Anyhoo, whether you love them or think they're a dumb plasticky idea, the Penguin is a damn sight easier to take apart than most Axis/crossbar knives thanks to those separate toggle pieces. It means there's no need to try to maneuver the crossbar out of some damn silly slot like you're playing Operation. With the plastic toggle and spring removed, the inner steel liner just lifts off with no further gymnastics required. Inside you'll see the bearings — ceramic ones, no less.

I will say that the interface between endstop pin, both diabolo shaped handle spacers, and their attendant holes in the liners are ridiculously tight. On the bright side, that means no tiny parts will fall out the moment you take the bastard apart. But conversely, getting them to let go of each other the first time is a harrowing affair, and getting them lined up again to put the thing back together requires getting everything lined up perfectly.

The pivot screw has an anti-rotation flat on it and that means your swanky QSP logo always winds up the right way up, no matter how badly you put the thing back together again. All of the screws are threadlockered with the blue stuff, but all of them came out easily and I didn't have to declare war on a single one of them to get 'em to let go. The pivot screw takes a T8 Torx head and the others are all T6. A word to the wise: The scale/spacer screws and the clip screws are slightly different from each other, with the latter being slightly longer and with fatter heads. So don't mix them up.

All of this makes the Penguin the easiest to dismantle Axis locker I've ever had the pleasure of messing with, and that's still including the tricky lineup job for the pins and spacers. This makes it supremely approachable to clean and de-lintify as necessary... If only it didn't apparently instantly invalidate your warranty to do so.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I really like what QSP's come up with, here. It's fitting that it's namesake is the most intelligent, the most elegant, indeed, the greatest of all birds.

What with the sheepsfoot blade, the bearings, and the Axis lock and all, what this really puts me in mind of is a non-humongous rendition of the CJRB Crag. Maybe QSP can make themselves the next CJRB after all.

That's A-OK with me, Q.E.D.

Keep on waddlin', my friends.