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Victorinox Swisscard Lite, Ruby | List Price: $38.00
Discount Price: $20.96
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Binding: Sports
Release Date: 2003-10-15
Features: - 13 functional features including the addition of LED mini light, magnifier and quattro bit.
- Standard features include small blade for opening boxes or mail, scissors, tweezers, ink pen, straight pen
- Three transluctent colors to choose from
Great toolkit [Posted on 2008-01-22]
The Victorinox Swisscard is a great toolkit for your wallet. It is a compact, bundle of tools for those times when you didn't think to bring your box knife, scissors, tweezers, pen, or ruler. It's not really meant to compete with your Leatherman or other heavy-duty all-purpose kit.
I am now on my fourth Swisscard having previously owned one Lite and two Classics. I destroyed the Lite and simply used the Classics so much that the scissor swing door wouldn't stay on and the knife wouldn't stay in its slot. My current Swisscard is the Lite with the red, transparent plastic.
The tools are sturdy and easily manipulated by normal sized hands.
The knife, while it does have a short tang, is strong and sufficient for cutting boxes, paper, fabric, or the impenetrable, plastic packaging most everything comes in.
The scissors are sharp and the spring reliably re-opens the scissors for smooth cutting.
The pen is simply a metal tube with plenty of ink in it--I never used all the ink in any of my pens. It's not comfortable but you'll have a pen when you need it.
The slotted screwdriver bits work just fine on small slotted screws or bolts although they don't have much depth. More on the Phillips bits later.
The tweezers tweeze and the stick pin sticks. I did replace the stick pin with a sharper pin from a sewing kit though.
So it is a great toolkit with which to scribble a phone number, cut open an envelope, tighten your eyeglasses, or get the splinter of wood out of your finger. There are some minuses though.
The transparent plastic body isn't as strong as the original opaque plastic bodies. The Swisscard I destroyed was made of the transparent plastic and it cracked every time I dropped the kit. The opaque plastic kits wore out but never cracked.
The LED flashlight is very small and not very powerful. It might help you find the keyhole two inches away, but that's all it'll help you find. Not that you could really get a powerful flashlight in a card of this size. I just don't think Victorinox should have tried. Better to have put a more useful tool in that location or simply reinforced the plastic body.
The Phillips screwdriver bits are laughable. I think the designers were given a two-dimensional representation of a Phillips bit because that is exactly what they produced. The ridge that would give the bit purchase in a Phillips headed screw is only 0.5mm in height. So the Phillips bit would be about as effective as the slotted bit except the Phillips bit is pointed, making it nearly worthless for any application. Again, far better to have a smaller, superior tool, than to overreach and have a larger, valueless tool.
You will have to remember to put your Swisscard in your check-in luggage as it won't make it past airport security. I had to have my kit mailed back to me by family seeing me off at the airport. It also won't pass through security in some of the more vigilant government buildings.
This model has some design flaws (hence the four starts), but it's a neat little toolkit that's guaranteed to get you curious looks.
Very neat! [Posted on 2008-01-28]
I bought this item for a groomsman gift and it was well liked! Very useful and easy to carry.
Great Item [Posted on 2008-06-18]
I always end up being stuck without a pen. This tool has it all and fits nice into your wallet. I have shown two other people this tool and they both ordered one. Well worth the money.
Victorinox Swisscard Lite, Ruby [Posted on 2008-07-26]
It's very hard to give you an accurate description on anything. I can give you the dimensions, weight and comparison to an object but it still won't give you a good visualization until you actually hold it. I will try to do my best to have you visualize the Swiss Card. Go into your wallet, really, go get 3 credit cards and place them on top of each other. The 3 credit cards has the same dimension and thickness of the Swiss Card. It is small and useful.
The Card its Self - It is 4 x 3 and as thick as 3 credit cards. It's very lite and thin. It has 13 tools (Amazon's description) with 6 actual tools. Knife, scissors, tweezers, screw driver, pin and pen. The other; ruler, light, magnifying glass. The other 4 are the different sizes of screw driver bit (13 tools). It's translucent which looks very cool held up to a light and is very useful.
The Knife - The knife is the same knife that comes with the fold-in Multi-tool. Same length and thickness but the handle is different. It is a little flimsy. The knife is good to cut open envelopes, cut strings, open plastic bags and whatever you need to open that doesn't require sawing or some muscle to open. The handle will break.
The Scissors - The scissors are the same ones in the Multi-Tool. These are a little bit more sturdy than the knife. It's fully metal with an "O" handle. The main scissor blade is fixed into the the handle and the second blade is attached like the one in the Multi-Tool. It is a little hard to hold. What I do is insert my pinkie finger into the ring and let the scissors rest on my fingers and then use my thumb to operate the cutting action. They are useful but not too often.
The Screw Driver - A lot of people are saying the screw driver is useless. I don't find this at all. When I first looked at it I though "Well, this will do nothing". When I tried it out, it worked great for me. I put together a stand up fan with out getting frustrated of having it slip or dropping out of my hand. The screw driver is the size of a quarter with the bits cut out. It actually has a lot of torque.
The Pen - Now this it useless. First off it has Blue ink. For some reason, I hate Blue ink. It's very hard to hold and the ink dries out very quickly in the tip. You have to rub the tip for literally a minute on a piece of paper to wet the ink. If you really need to find a pen, it's there but don't expect it as a good backup.
The Tweezers - They're OK. It's hard to actually get a splinter out with these but it can be done if the splinter in very superficial. There really is no use other than that.
The Pin - It's really just a pin. I guess if you need a pin, it's there. It's not a bad pin but I never really use it.
The Magnifying Glass - I have always found that the Swiss Army Knife Magnifying Glass was great. It's the same one in the Multi-Tool but fixed into the card its self. It doesn't make what you are magnifying bubbly or warped. It works very well.
The Red Light - When I first turned it on, it didn't give off much light and it's hard to see things in the dark with a dim red light. But I have used it may times. I've used it to find things under car seats, to see what the temperature was on the thermostat and little things that need a little light so you can see it. It's more useful than you would think. You can change the battery very easily. You just lift the tab up and place a new one it. It takes a CR 1025 Lithium Coin Cell battery. It might be hard to find a replacement battery though.
The Ruler - It's impossible to read and is only 3 inches. Not much use here. It does have a straight edge to scrape up things. Salt, sugar, etc.
After writing this review I realized there are a lot of useless things on the Swisscard but I use it all the time. If you buy it, you will use it. Sadly, Swiss Army Knives are impossible to find in-stores now. I live in Chicago and can't find many knives. So I hope this review helps with on-line buying. It's worth $20.
Used for daily use and well worth the investment [Posted on 2008-08-04]
There's not a day that goes by where I'm not pulling this Swisscard out of my wallet for something, whether it's to open a box with the knife, screw something with the screwdriver or jot a note down when I can't find or am too lazy to find a pen. The red LED is an added bonus, so when I invariably drop something under my desk or at night, I can look for it without irritating people with a white light. Plus, the red (swisscard) on red (LED) is a pretty slick look.
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