Kershaw

Kershaw is the volume brand of the KAI group, sitting under Zero Tolerance in the same family, and it is where most people's first decent folding knife comes from. The Leek, the Blur and the Cryo have each sold in enormous numbers, largely on the SpeedSafe assisted-opening mechanism they helped popularise.

SpeedSafe is worth understanding before you buy: it is an assisted opener, not an automatic. You start the blade with a flipper or thumb stud and a torsion bar finishes the motion, which is a legally distinct category from a spring-released automatic in several states. Steels run from budget 8Cr13MoV that sharpens easily to CPM-154 and D2 that hold an edge considerably longer.