Home CasaVerdeSmart ,,,,,Perhaps an unusual gadget for our audience but probably a tool that we should all have in the pouch: RavPower RP-TL001 is the multipurpose knife that our editorial team was able to touch recently to analyze its characteristics and build quality.
It is a tool that offers more functions and therefore able to adapt to the most common uses thanks to the screwdriver with 9 interchangeable tips and the removable pliers, useful both at home and in the car or garage. For Sunday outings or real picnics, the bottle opener and can opener can be just as useful, obviously without underestimating the main blade with serrated base to cut paper, fabric, ropes and small branches in a few minutes.
As did
The knife is made entirely of stainless steel, painted black and with a slightly matte finish. There are no wooden or plastic parts that usually make up at least the handle: here everything is made of steel, sturdy and serrated on the two outer sides to offer a better grip.
All this affects the weight of 222 grams according to our kitchen scale. Certainly not a few for a knife that measures 11 x 3 x 2.5 centimeters when closed, but which in fact give the knife a feeling of strength, as well as justified by the presence of pliers and another series of tools incorporated in the handle.
The custody
The knife is sold together with a practical fabric case, externally clothed and with a rigid structure, tailored to accommodate the knife and the series of interchangeable tips for the screwdriver. The edges are thick and accompanied by apparently robust seams, the opening is guaranteed by a tab that locks externally via a snap button. Finally, on the back there is a buttonhole to be able to easily fix it to the belt of the trousers, thus having the knife always at hand, for example during a mountain hike.
The instruments
This knife offers five tools:
The main blade – is perhaps the most versatile of the five and is the one that impressed us the most. The blade resembles a small John Rambo knife in miniature, both for the lines and for the serrated lower half, very useful for cutting ropes or sawing (with a little patience) small branches. It is very sharp, so much so that it is possible to cut a sheet of paper by holding it with one hand suspended in mid-air as if it were butter and the tip is very thin, capable of piercing even a stack of several sheets with a simple tap. Overall it is 8 cm long, 3 cm the serrated portion and the remaining 5 cm the smooth blade that ends at the tip. The back is 3 mm thick and this makes the blade really stiff, making it impossible to flex between the fingers. Two other features make this tool on the one hand practical and safe to use: there is in fact a locking system that keeps the blade in position, preventing it from closing suddenly during use, thus cutting the fingers that grip the body. For the extraction, however, a pin on the end comes to our aid that can be controlled with the thumb of the same hand with which we hold the knife (unfortunately for its position it is a function that cannot be used by left-handers), therefore very useful when the other hand is already engaged (perhaps to hold a rope steady).
The pliers – a tool perhaps not common in multipurpose knives and that instead we find in this model is the pliers. It is extracted from the same side as the main blade by lifting a lever and turning it (with a little force) until it almost touches the opposite side of the handle. In the past we have had multipurpose knives equipped with pliers and here the thickness of those that RavPower has chosen for this model is striking: they are in fact very thin (4mm) and therefore manage to take up little space reducing not only the overall weight of the knife, but also the size of the handle, thus ensuring that it still remains quite pocket-sized. The pliers can also be widened by several centimeters, thus managing to grasp even branches or tubular sections of generous dimensions. It has a flat section 2 cm long, a central one with a classic circular shape 1 cm long and finally the terminal part is composed of two shears (8mm). The lever is really well made and the shape is such as to guarantee an excellent grip, being able to apply force with all the fingers of the hand.
Bottle opener and can opener – on the back there are instead the last three tools offered by the pocket knife. Two of these are the bottle opener and the can opener, which can be removed through the common slot on one of the two sides of the same. There is little to say here, they are the classics that we find in almost all multipurpose knives, also here with a rather generous thickness (3mm) and which makes them really sturdy and impossible to bend.
Screwdriver – last but not least, indeed perhaps the real killer feature of this product is the screwdriver, which as regards the actual knife consists of a pin 3 centimeters long. In fact, to work it must necessarily be accompanied to the cylinder that we find stored in a special pocket of the case together with the interchangeable tips. This cylinder is magnetic and on both sides, locking firmly both to the pin of the knife and to the tips inserted from time to time. There are 9 in all: three star tips (PH3, PH2, PH1), three flat tips (7, 5, 3) and three hexagonal tips (H5, H4, H3). Honestly, the tips are difficult to extract from the special container, a sort of silicone cartridge that adheres all too well to the various tips requiring you to flex them over and over again to be able to remove them from their housing.
How is it going
In these days the weather has not been on our side and therefore we have not had the opportunity to actually test it on the field, forcing our tests to be used only at home.
The screwdriver behaves well, perhaps the handle not having a regular shape is not as practical as a common screwdriver. It is equally true, however, that it is a secondary tool and that it should only be used in emergency cases, such as for example to fix the screw of a chair that has loosened on the fly, and certainly not to assemble an entire Ikea kit: for that it is good to rely on specific kits.
Nothing to report for bottle openers and can openers, both do their duty. The performance of the pliers, on the other hand, is very good, which would not be expected due to their reduced thickness. Thanks to the wide handle, on the other hand, they are able to handle very well and also tightly tighten around objects, easily managing to break even a pencil.
Finally, the main blade is excellent, both in the serrated part which in a few minutes allowed us to perfectly cut the branch (half a centimeter thick) of a dying bonsai that we had at home, both in the smooth part, which as we have already mentioned above is very sharp and must also be handled with extreme care.
Conclusions
The impressions we have had are really all positive. The only thing you will have to live with is the weight, increased in large part by the stiffer and safer stainless steel handle. The structure of the various parts that compose it is linear and we believe that it could be possible to easily disassemble it to remove some instruments by reducing their size: the star screws that hold the two external parts that make up the handle closed could in fact be unscrewed to remove the secondary instruments lightening the knife a lot, leaving only the main blade (this is however a hypothesis as we did not delight in the disassembly of the knife, thus preferring it with all the tools offered).
Some parts, such as pliers and screwdrivers, are unusual for a utility knife but are also the ones that make it much more versatile, not only for hiking and fishing, but also for occasional use around the home, in the car and in the garage.
Retail price
RavPower RP-TL001 is on sale on Amazon for 24.99 euros.
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