Vosteed Shilin Cutter pocket knife review – A knife worthy of your EDC consideration!

REVIEW – A functional and interesting EDC knife? Yes, please! I’m testing the Shilin Cutter from Vosteed, which blends a traditional Taiwanese blade style with a very modern knife design. How does it all come together? Time to do some slicing. To the review!

What is it?

The Vosteed Shilin Cutter is an EDC pocket knife.

What’s included?

I want to give some props to Vosteed for their excellent packaging which includes a branded aluminum storage box (suitable for gifting), stickers, a cleaning cloth, and printed instructions for disassembling your knife for cleaning & maintenance. 

The Vosteed Shilin Cutter also comes with that lovely padded case for your knife. The case features a bright orange interior and a strip on the front for velcro patches.

Tech specs

Design and features

This is the second knife I’ve tested from Vosteed, the first being the Anklyo Vanchor Lock Knife. The Shilin Cutter shares a lot of the excellent manufacturing and design details I saw in that blade. I’ll address some of the design differences in the performance section below, but it’s nice to see that the core DNA carries through in both designs.

Let’s start with the basics. Vosteed produces each design with multiple materials and handle choices. The style I am testing is the 154CM blade and G10 handle. This blade has very clean lines and an ergonomic handle design contoured to improve control for both small and large hands.  

The blade design is based on a traditional Taiwanese shape that has its roots in agricultural work. The wide leaf shape and rounded cutting edge are designed for comfortable extended use by changing the angle of slicing & cutting in relationship to your hand/wrist position.  

The Shilin Cutter boasts the excellent Vanchor lock system that I tested in my previous review. A magnetic connector keeps the blade in place in the closed position. Open it to full extension and you’ll hear the click as it locks in place. Push the button to release the lock. You can then flip the knife back into the closed position. 

A pair of gold studs on either side of the blade and a ridged tab on the back side give you other options for flipping the knife to the open or closed position. If you love a fidget tool, this knife gives you all the options.

The machining details are excellent and precise throughout the build. There were no burrs, misalignments, or loose bits to be found anywhere in my examination. The pocket clip is not reversible, but it is removable.

Here’s a close up of the handle so you can see the textured machining designed to add some grip as well as the hole for a lanyard/chord if you want to add one. The textured grip makes for a pretty design that adds some character, but I didn’t find that it added any extra grippiness in regular use. They do offer other handle options if that is important to you. 

You’re looking at a total length of 7.07″ when fully opened with a 2.9″ blade and a 4.17″ handle length. That puts it on the smaller side for larger hands, but the chunky contoured grip and that cutout for your index finger make for comfortable, firm grip positions when needed. All this comes in a pocket-friendly 3.37 ounce total weight.

Performance

The combination of excellent ergonomics and the unique blade design make the Vosteed Shilin Cutter a very adaptable working tool. Here’s a shot of me cutting the plastic straps off a recent package I received for another review. This is interesting because that convex blade shape allows me to get behind the strap without bending my wrist, pulling the blade back through the strap to avoid damaging anything in the box. 

Here’s an even better example of that blade design in action. We recently added some decorative opaque cling film to the windows above our kitchen sink, and we used the knife for all the cutting tasks. Here we’re cutting the film to the length we need. The blade passes through the vinyl like butter right out of the box (no sharpening).

Next we rolled up the sheets and cut the width to the size of the window. That convex shape works nicely here for working the blade back and forth through the roll.

In the last bit, we’re trimming the excess around the edges after applying the vinyl to the window. This was where that design really showed its stuff. The light, nimble handle and tapered point allowed us to get up into the corners at odd angles to trim off the excess material quickly and easily.

I put this knife up against the Vosteed Ankylo I tested back in September for reference. You can see the significant difference in the size and overall beefiness of that blade compared to the Shilin. While you can see the shared DNA in both blades in the machining & shared features, I see the Ankylo as a hardcore working/outdoor knife compared to the elegant versatility of the Shilin. The Ankylo also leverages the reverse tanto blade style and allows for you to switch the sides for the pocket clip, 

Here’s a three-way comparison shot that shows the Shilin and Ankylo up against my current EDC knife, the CRKT Pilar. The interesting bit here is that the shorter (5.94″) and heavier (4.2 oz) than the Shilin. 

What I like about Vosteed Shilin Cutter

• Lightweight and very maneuverable
• Blade shape is adaptable to a variety of different tasks
• Excellent ergonomics
• Good size for EDC 

What needs to be improved?

• Blade shape may not work for everyone, depending on the intended use

Final thoughts

The Vosteed Shilin Cutter is an excellent EDC pocketknife that has become my daily driver. It’s just a wee bit bigger than my usual EDC, but the lightweight and adaptable design makes it a very flexible tool for daily use. It also looks great and sports the same excellent build quality as the bigger Anylo I tested previously. This one is going to stick around for a long time in my EDC kit.

Price: $99 to $149 depending on material choices
Where to buy: Go to the Vosteed web site to buy!
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Vosteed. Vosteed did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.