Microtech UMS Ultratech Knife

The most revered Microtech knife may be the Halo but the Ultratech is their most popular. That’s because it balances size, function and cost without sacrificing quality of craftsmanship or material to make it an impeccable utilitarian edged tool.

OTF knives tend to be typecast as strictly tactical devices and the Ultratech certainly fits that general purpose. But its practical usability and carryability makes it an exceptional everyday carry knife.

As in an EDC knife. Something you can have on your person all the time, every time as a general purpose tool – something handy, reliable, integral and seamless to carry without a second though like a phone.

With a blade of just under 3 and a half inches on a well ratioed slender but ergonomic body, it’s a full size knife that handles like a much beefier one but fits in your pocket or clipped otherwise like a much smaller tool.

Microtech makes many variations of the Ultratech ranging from different blade grinds, finishes and custom pieces. Reviewed here is the UMS Ultratech in tactical black with a partially serrated tanto edge.

These are only available to “Uniformed Military Services” personnel and is directly from Microtech. The other versions are available to everyone else.

The only differences between this and other Ultratech’s is that the typically bright white claw logo on the front is instead a subdued dark gray with “USM” also stamped on it, the hardware is black as supposed to bare steel and lastly, there are no serial numbers on these as suppose to almost all other Microtech products (perhaps for OPSEC).

As with the compact Microtech Dirac, the UMS Ultratech also has a double-action mechanism – the blade is deployed by actuating the switch. It goes without saying but to those unfamiliar with Microtech knives, the operation of the action and smoothness of it is as precise and flawless as their other models.

It doesn’t feel as “solid” as the Halo or Dirac but it is damn solid (each have completely different builds, internals). However, the blade play is also slightly more pronounced on the Ultratech (a tolerance necessary for out-the-front knives), but it’s still tighter than most. It won’t get in the way of doing its work of cutting and piercing whatsoever.

Every few years Microtech changes the blade steel they use, only because the best “super steel” is newly developed through time. For the this generation of the UMS Ultratech, they use CTS-204P. This steel along with M390 is effectively the best possible metal currently available to use as edged tools.

Like a shark, the Ultratech line has barely evolved since its inception 2 decades ago – because it started nearly perfect making little room for further perfection. But make no mistake, each generation of it has been improved upon it before the last.

There are smaller and less expensive models of the Ultratech such as the UTX-70 and UTX-85, but this is the most ideal general purpose automatic knife.

As the flagship model of the Microtech OTF lineup, the Ultratech® sets the standard for Out-The-Front technology.