After carrying a Benchmade AFO for years, I decided to go to a smaller, lighter knife. My EDC knife use consists mostly of opening boxes, cutting thin plastic, etc. Just general stuff, but the knife gets opened 20-30 times a day on average. This post isn't to trash any maker or blade, but may make some of you think about your choice for an EDC blade given the cost of a quality OTF.
First the good: They are very light and you hardly notice them in your pocket. This will spoil you when you try to go back to a folding knife.
Now the rest of the story:
Started out with an Ultratech Spartan with a tri-grip textured handle. This lasted all of 2 weeks because it was shredding my pockets and the blade was pretty useless at cutting anything more than an envelope. I'm not knocking the Elmax steel or the factory sharpness of the blade, it just doesn't have any belly and a double edge blade not only felt weak, but wouldn't allow you to choke up on it if you had to cut something thick.
Changed to a Benchmade Phaeton. Single edge, somewhat drop point blade, S30V. It was light, had enough texture to get a good grip on it, and S30V isn't hard to sharpen and holds an edge well.
The knife was pretty tight at first with very little blade play. After about 2 years, I started noticing vertical play when I would cut anything heavy. This got progressively worse as time went on. Finally, and fortunately while I was at home, I opened the knife and the blade stuck. The steel blade is obviously harder than the aluminum handle material and had finally beat it to the point the spring couldn't overcome the internal damage that years of use caused. I couldn't get the knife disassembled until I hammered the blade back in with a rubber hammer. It took a little creative dremel and file work to get it functioning again. Yes, I know I could have sent it back to Benchmade, but that's a pain in the ass with their policy on warranty work for auto knives when you aren't LEO or military.
I was able to get the knife functioning reliably again, but have decided light weight OTFs don't make good EDC blades when you use them regularly.