You know, I like to think of what I do here as a public service sometimes. I am honored to make it my duty to find these inevitable types of blogspam EDC gadgets and be the one to belly up to that checkout page and say, yes, I will take one for the team and put down my $7.46 to determine once and for all of said item is utter crap. Because someone has to. For science. For the betterment of mankind.

Here is the “D2 Blade Titanium Alloy MINI” from – which I did not twig to at the time – our good friends YESISOK. Its full moniker is the “D2 Blade Titanium Alloy MINI Gear Folding Knife Multifunctional Outdoor EDC Self-defens Tool Outdoor Portable Utility Keychain.” (The E fell off, presumably in some manner of industrial accident. Perhaps similar to last time. An alternative theory also presents itself.)

It’s another one of those twin handle/single pivot jobs. Except this one’s got fuckin’ magnets.

This knife makes a fabulous fidget toy because of its retention mechanism, which is solely comprised of four small neodymium button magnets flush mounted in the tips of the handles. That’s basically it’s entire deal. The magnets are oriented so that the handles elegantly snick into their open and closed positions with basically zero effort, and no other mechanical consideration required. Which is just as well, really, because as we determined last time such mechanical bits are at this price point very likely to go slightly wrong.

Rather like unto a balisong knife and quite a bit unlike most other pocketknives (those not appearing in this column, anyway) the D2 Mini’s two handle halves swing in opposite directions meeting up with each other again at the 180 degree mark, leaving the blade exposed. And since the retention is magnetic you can even with a bit of practice do this with one hand. If you just manage to shove the handles vaguely near enough to either of their home positions the magnets take over and snap them home for you.

You can also of course just fidget with it incessantly by sliding the magnets across each other, without actually deploying the blade. It’s even unlikely anyone watching would notice that the thing is even a knife, unless you were dumb enough fully deploy it in their presence. Rather, it’s not unreasonable to assume that it’s akin to one of those magnetic sliding playing card fidget thingies, which is not too far off the mark in any case.

But rather than a playing card motif, the D2 Mini is very minimalist chic, just a rectangular lozenge with twin faceted handle plates and otherwise eschewing any other decoration. It still excels for this kind of use case since it can be actuated reasonably quietly (and with practice, can be done in near silence), doesn’t require any open space around it so it can be manipulated in a hoodie pocket or under your desk where nobody can see, and if you ask me it provides a very satisfactory tactile experience.

Somewhat disappointingly the spec chart for this one is a little bit less amusing than last time…

…But it’s probably close to accurate. The handle slabs claim to be made out of titanium and it’s possible that they genuinely are. A magnet does not stick to them, and they’re once again in that category of too dense to be aluminum and too light to be zinc. The blade might even genuinely be D2 as well. Damned if I can tell, but for the price it’s unlikely to matter. If you’re expecting an exhaustive edge retention testing regimen on this, well, prepare to walk away disappointed.

There are really only two problems with this, if you even want to call the first one a problem. Like its predecessor, they don’t have “MINI” in the name all in caps for nothing. This is quite small: Just 2-13/32" long when closed and 3-3/8" long open, with a titchy little 1-7/16" long drop pointed blade. The blade is 0.98" thick, so far from robust, but with its stubby shortness this is unlikely to be an issue. The handles are dead rectangular with rounded corners and edges, 0.688" across, and the entire ensemble is 0.380" thick from peak to peak across its handle slabs. It weighs 39.2 grams or 1.38 ounces, another clue that a large portion of it may indeed be genuine titanium.

Look how weensy. Isn’t it cute.

Edginess

I did not initially expect to write anything about the D2 Mini’s cutting capability. It’s a $7 fidget toy from China, and it’d take three of them just to comfortably fill out the Zippo pocket on your jeans. You’re not really expecting anything groundbreaking, are you?

Hawk-eyed readers of course noticed the chip in the edge in the blade photo above, however, which is precisely as it was delivered from the factory. If you missed it, here it is under high magnification:

This isn’t the end of the world but beats me how it happened, because the D2 Mini has absolutely no spacer pins, pegs, screws, or indeed anything at all that the edge could have contacted in any part of its operation.

The blade rests neatly in a machined pocket in one half of the handle, and its travel is restrained by a pin that rides in a little semicircular groove cut into one of the slabs. It can’t be caused to contact any of the metalwork in the handle in any way, no matter how hard you try. Don’t worry, you’ll see more of that groove later.

All that aside, I was floored to discover that its blade geometry is precisely 20° per side, or a 40° combined edge angle. It’s both true and consistent for once. So dressing that chip out of the blade took all of about four seconds on my Spyderco sharpener at one of its stock blade angles, and with no effort.

The grind is also true, even, and consistent all the way to the point which is a rare breath of fresh air with cheapies like this. All in it could have been a lot worse, and while I could have done without the chip in it right off of the starting block, at least it was trivially easy to make it possibly unwisely sharp. I can’t tell if this is some indicator of quality, or just sheer dumb luck in the case of my particular example.

Gubbins

The D2 mini is only held together with one screw. It’s only lightly threadlockered and required no gymnastics to remove other than sticking a plain T8 Torx driver in either side.

Contrary to all logic, reason, or expectation it’s got ceramic ball bearing pivots. At its current price point it may be literally cheaper to buy one of these, throw 95% of it away, and just keep the bearings to stick in your next custom knife. At the moment a pair of 6mm inner bore ceramic thrust bearings retails for about $10, bought in non-bulk quantities.

This is all the hardware you get. Or need, for that matter. This is industrial design simplification taken all the way to its maximum extent.

The handle slabs are pocketed to accept the bearing races and here you can also see the track for the endstop pin to ride in. The machine work is impeccable. Say what you like about the Chinese, but they have this sort of thing down.

Well, except for one thing.

The endstop pin isn’t 100% accurate in its track so there is a bit of rotational rattle in the blade. If you’re holding the handles it’s not going anywhere beyond that, mind you – having it fold up on your knuckle is out of the question. There’s no lateral play, either, thanks to the bearings. And when it’s in the closed position you can’t rattle the blade by shaking the knife, either, probably due in no small part to it being restrained magnetically due to its proximity to the magnets.

That’s not the annoying part, though.

The Annoying Part

This is billed as a “keychain” knife. There’s a hole all the way through the tail end of it, perfect for installation of said keyring. In fact, my example even came with one in the package.

Except.

You’ve figured it out already, haven’t you?

The keyring hole has to separate when you pivot the handles. With a ring installed you can’t open the knife.

That really renders the entire exercise pointless. They may as well just not have drilled that damn hole in it, for all the good it does you.

The little zipper-tab knife we looked at previously solved this by relegating its loop to only one of the handle halves. Whoever designed this was altogether too clever by half, but not quite clever enough.

The Inevitable Conclusion

In that race to have one more bullet point on the spec sheet, sometimes it’s possible to go one step too far.

So it is with the D2 Mini, which would be tough to call anything but perfect – especially considering that it’s so cheap that it’s near as well free – except that some dipstick somewhere decided that it must have one more feature, and absolutely insisted that somebody drill that fucking keyring hole in it. This simple inclusion moves the D2 Mini’s slider quite firmly from “neat” and sets it to “dumb.” Because everyone’s going to be annoyed by that, and that stench of ineptitude will follow it around forever. Now it’s a joke. Can you believe these morons? R&D doesn’t talk to the guys in product testing, am I right? With those kind of skills, these guys ought to be designing cars. Har-de-har, et cetera.

What a drag.