It is of course immaculately machined and assembled, not a single burr anywhere, and everything snicks open and closed with Swiss precision…but I find myself unsure whether I want to keep it. It’s almost as if it is so packed with technical competence that there’s no room left for character. Nothing about the tool exemplifies this more than the side-scales on the handles, which instead of having some nifty pattern on them, are instead stamped with English Imperial and Metric rulers. Not a square millimeter of this tool is wasted on anything so superfluous as stylishness. (I do have one complaint, though; the pliers aren’t spring-loaded, and having gotten used to spring-loaded pliers it’s hard to go back.)

I suppose that says something about how much I actually *need* the SwissTool X. If I didn’t have any multitools and I really needed one, this thing would be fantastic. But my needs are already met by a combination of a Leatherman Crunch (lacking in flair similar to the SwissTool X, but packing an immensely useful lockjaw plier), A Victorinox Midnite MiniChamp (the most fully-equipped mini multitool Victorinox makes, with the typically excellent blades, scissors, and a great small crosshead screwdriver), and a SeberTool M4 (the best all-purpose “hard-use” mini multitool ever made, nothing else comes close, not even the Victorinox MiniChamp). I also have a Leatherman Wingman for light work, a Wenger S557 for precision jobs that are too big for the Midnite MiniChamp to handle, and a first-run Gerber Legend 800 (before Gerber’s quality went down the drain) which is pretty much retired nowadays but still gets taken out for things like hard wire cutting and sawing, because the wire cutters and the saw blade are replaceable.

So I’ve got a pretty good collection already. The reason I got the SwissTool X is because I wanted to see how precisely-made a multitool could be, and nobody can do that better than Victorinox — but now that I’ve seen it firsthand, I realize I don’t really need it, and it’s not “cool” enough to admire for non-functional reasons. So, should I add it to the collection on the assumption that someday multitools will all suck because they’ll be cheapened to the point of uselessness, or should I send it back?