So, my friend bought this benchmade 940-1 clone from some China dealer, and while he was over a few weeks ago I got to try it out, I bought it from him for what he paid for it ($40) and I decided I really liked it.

But, I got to wondering just how much better the real thing is, so I bought one of those too.

Here are a few comparison pictures and a summary of my feelings between the two.

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In this image the fake is on the right and the real is on the left.

The fake ones blade has a stone washed finish and is made out of D2 steel, the blade on the fake is of moderate quality, but it seems to have a slightly uneven grind, using my lansky kit the bevel on one side is much more favored. The real blade is S90V steel, and has a satin finish, in the picture the real blade has a darker color, and the reverse tanto tip has a longer point.  The benchmade logo on the real one is laser etched, and actually has a sort of pitting in it, while the fake one seems to be some sort of acid/bluing type of effect. Both steels are a pain In the ass to sharpen, but the diamond stones make a huge difference.

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Once again the real one being on the left the Osborne logo is different, and the fake has a “patent” number below it that ironically has “RE41” or REAL as the patent number. If you see one with this, it’s fake.

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Sorry for the poor quality of this picture, but once again the real blade on the left, you can see that the spine of the real one tapers more toward the top and is more even, though the blade thickness itself is very similar between the two.

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This is the last picture I have, but In this one you can see that the standoff’s on the real are a much more vibrant blue, it is my understanding that all 940-1 clones have a much darker and dull colored set of standoff’s.

Another thing that I noticed between the two of them is that the finishing on the CF scales on the fake is much more rough, on the real all of the carbon fiber is smooth and uniform, where in the fake you can see some pitting and tear marks where the scales were ground/milled away.

Overall the fake isn’t horrible, and for the ~$50 that they sell for it isn’t a bad knife, but the real one is much better. $250 better? Well that is for you to decide.

In the long run the things to make note of are: lesser finish and quality on the fake, D2 blade steel rusts easily, and the clone steals the benchmade logo and trademark. Although, if I had t handled the fake in the first place, I likely never would have bought the real one.

Also, the axis lock on the real one is much smoother, the stainless steel liners on the fake one have a rough finish so you have to use two fingers to pull back the axis lock, the real one can be easily actuated by one finger.

My friend claims that he can also get a clone of the benchmade contego, so in the future I may buy a real contego to compare to the fake that he gets.

Don't buy knives off of Fleabay and Amazon

Yeah, I can see how someone can get fooled by a seller sending a fake 940-1 in the place of the real thing.

It would be interesting to see a comparison the internal components.

I'm curious why you say ones with the patent number are fake. I have a 943 with the RE41 number on it, so I went to Benchmades website and found video that shows the same number below the Osborne logo.

Oh wow, that’s interesting, the one I have that I got directly from their website doesn’t have that, perhaps older models do?

Could be. I’ve been carrying mine for 4 years. They don’t have any photos of that side of the blade on their site that I could find, but everything on google images seems to have the patent number. That patent is for the Axis lock as far as I can tell.

Drop it on concrete and see if the pivot breaks.

The blade might be ok but the hardware on the knock offs usually suck.

The clone probably has a more even bevel than the real benchmade.

I’ll see if I can set up some sort of test for the axis lock/pivot point.

That's a damn good looking fake.

Yes it is, and the action is quite smooth, if I didn’t know better I could easily be fooled by it aside from the fact that the blade easily rusts.