Last Nov. I purchased a second Bugout knife to give to my son for his birthday in March. The lock side seemed a little sticky at the store. They assured me it would soon loosen up, and from past experience I thought they were correct.
Having some time to play around with the knife I thought I would play around with it until the slide loosened up. It never did, it only got worse. It wasn’t reliable to lock the blade open, the slide would sometimes stick in the mid position so tightly I had to push it with a tool to get it unstuck. Never happened with any previous BM knife I had purchased.
I finally contacted Benchmade, sent them the knife and they returned it working flawlessly quicker than they estimated. [however, I think many companies now days always give you a later date than what is their actual delivery time, just so people cannot give them a review saying the delivery was late. Amazon estimated delivery date is always much later than I have ever received delivery]
The BM Osborne 940-1 is also a very nice knife, but > 2x the price of the Bugout 535.
However, I am more of a Spyderco guy than BM guy. The Spyderco Delica 4 is most often seen as the closest competitor to the Bugout. But that depends on what steel is used, it is available in several different steels, and some of the will add about $100 to the price. The Delica is just slightly heavier than the Bugout, at 2.44 oz. Available in several scale colors.