There’s always a moment that you find yourself wishing you had the right tool with you, and the Gerber Dime is the answer to life’s small problems. From opening anti-theft plastic packaging around a new USB drive to snipping arduino test leads, the Gerber Dime is the perfect tool to have in your pocket or small EDC.

I’ve been carrying around a Gerber Dime for about three weeks now. I don’t review products until I’ve actually put them through their paces, and the Gerber Dime is definitely a must-have in your pocket! Over the past three weeks, I’ve used the Dime to…

The Gerber Dime Is A Perfect Keychain MultiTool For EDC

3 Week Gerber Dime Review

There’s always a moment that you find yourself wishing you had the right tool with you, and the Gerber Dime is the answer to life’s small problems. From opening anti-theft plastic packaging around a new USB drive to snipping arduino test leads, the Gerber Dime is the perfect tool to have in your pocket or small EDC.

I’ve been carrying around a Gerber Dime for about three weeks now. I don’t review products until I’ve actually put them through their paces, and the Gerber Dime is definitely a must-have in your pocket! Over the past three weeks, I’ve used the Dime to:

File my nails down

Cut arduino leads

Fix my son’s training wheels on his bike

Screw down a loose handle on a drawer for my wife

Open more than a few beer bottles (LOL)

Cut an old Credit Card up (That was so satisfying)

Open packaging for a new hard drive

Crimp a couple of leads for a secondary 12V car charger

Whittle sticks to a point for roasting marshmallows

Punch an extra hole in my younger son’s belt so it fit right

Cut and clean under my nails

With every task, the Gerber Dime stood up to the challenge and performed it’s duties flawlessly.

There was only one task that I pulled it out for that it couldn’t handle, and oddly enough, that was to fix the wheel on my roller chair at work. It popped off, but the 18MM nut was just to hard to get the pliers around as it was also inside of the arm that extended from the chair cylinder to the wheel. I had to pull out the Gerber Suspension for that job, and use the Dime to tighten the bottom nut (14MM) closest to the roller wheel.

Gerber Dime Product Tour

Starting off, the Dime has good weight for a pocket tool. Unlike cheaper multitools you can buy at auto parts stores and Walmart for example, the Dime weighs a little over 2oz, and feels solid in your hand. I purchased the blue handled Dime, but it also comes in black, red and orange.

Pliers

As I said above, the pliers are excellent for limited use. They aren’t designed for big jobs, but then again, that’s why you carry a full size multi-tool as well, right? ;D

Bottle Opener

It’s quite easy to pop the cap on your favorite brew, and believe me, my friends and I were testing this feature quite a bit over the past few weeks. The clutch (part that hooks on the bottom of the cap) grabs the cap firmly and no one really mis-pried their cap (unless you’re name is Todd and you’re three sheets to the wind! LOL). The one complaint I do have is since the opener is fixed, it does have a tendency to snag on pocket threads in my 511 tactical pants, so pulling out of the pocket sometimes can take a few tries, and I end up untangling it with one hand, which probably looks like I’m playing a serious game of pocket pool. I’d like to have seen the Dime also include an optional belt clip. It would have been the perfect size to fit right next to the Streamlight Microstream.

Mini Scissors

Used to get rid of those nasty little loose threads in the pocket of the pants so the Gerber won’t snag, they are also great for paper, business cards and even handle cutting credit cards with relative ease. I had the joy of cutting up one of my credit cards after it was paid off (FINALLY), and boy did it feel good (emotionally) and was pretty easy to do. I also tested them by cutting my nails to see if they’d work if I didn’t have nail clippers with me, and sure enough, they do cut, but you’ll also want to use the file on the flip side of the same handle, to smooth them down. The scissors make for pretty jagged nails.

File

As I said above, I filed my nails with this, but that was the only use I found for it in the three weeks of testing.

Large & Small Flathead Screwdrivers

I used the large flathead to tighten down my son’s training wheel a bit over the three weeks, and the small one to tighten down a drawer handle. Both worked as expected, but I had to open the Dime to get more leverage to tighten the training wheel. Not an optimal use for the Dime, but it does work.

Knife

The Gerber Dime has a pretty sharp 1 3/8 inch blade on board that was used quite a few times from opening boxes of goodies from Amazon (YAY! More stuff to review!) to whittling the ends of sticks for a marshmallow roast last weekend. It’s also opened letters and other various tasks. While you don’t really need to sharpen the blade right out of the box, you can for an even sharper knife.

Retail Package Opener

Probably the weirdest thing on any multitool, but it makes sense when you actually have that blister pack that you’re trying to open. Plastic packaging can be a real pain in the @ss to open, but with this little tool, It’s a lot easier. I do think that they totally wasted the space on it since the tool serves such a singular function, and you already have a knife blade. I would much rather have seen a can opener or even just an awl. I think the general public would have far more use for that in a pinch than the package opener. I used this to clean the dirt under my nails, punch holes in leather and attempt to open a can of tuna to see if it could be done. It takes a ton of work and isn’t very good at the job, but if this was your only tool in an emergency, it can be done.

Overall thoughts

Despite the retail package opener, I found that I was reaching for the Gerber Dime enough to make the purchase worthwhile. I found plenty of uses for it and will keep it as part of my 5th pocket carry in my pants (or in the EDC if needed). Either way, I was glad I had this one every time I needed it, and it surely made life easier by having it on me.