It's hard to get information on these knives. I have read from three different sources that they're Chinese, Russian, and made in the US out of Chinese and Taiwanese parts. I've seen a number of positive reviews but I've also seen the exact same 'personalized' ad copy on more than one website pretending to be the knife seller's reaction to these knives, so it's clear that all that was written by the manufacturer/middleman. Evidently from some comments made elsewhere, the brand owner is much more of a sales guy than a knife guy.
There are a couple questionable claims, like D2 having a razor edge. I own a ton of D2 knives so it's not like I think it's terrible stuff. It’s run of the mill good rugged steel -- but its commonality reflects economics much more than it reflects the degree to which D2 is a good fit for pocket knives. D2 is old as hell and cheap as sin to manufacture, and despite a relatively high Rockwell hardness, it doesn't take crazy technology to grind and polish and hone, people have been forging and finishing D2 into blades for a long time, and even a chimp can heat treat D2 to a higher hardness than most common knife steels achieve, so it brings serious wear resistance to the table. Fewer mistakes are made forging and finishing, less waste and scrap being produced by those mistakes, so more cost effective in the round than working with a high vanadium steel like S35VN. Cheap to source, easy to work -- THAT is why manufacturers love D2, and hire so many ad men to butter up its description and make it sound sexier than a hundred year old tool steel. That's the ultimate reason you the consumer end up reading so much tendentious ad copy about D2 knives that make it sound better than just ok.
The truth is people love D2’s strength; the truth also is, a lot of people want a sharper edge on their pocket knife than they can get with D2, especially once that factory grind wears down some. This confuses some who equate sharpenability to the ability to take a keen edge, which it is not. Hardness, toughness, grain size, purity, even the size of some individual molecules in the steel matrix all impacts how sharp of an edge you can get a blade of any given grind and angle to take. At the microscopic level, if a steel’s grain isn’t fine enough and the carbides small and hard enough, you just can’t get as keen an edge as you can with a steel like AEB-L or high carbon non or semi- stainless steel that has those qualities. What presents a thinner leading edge - a ‘blade’ made out of nothing but softballs pressed together, or one where there’s also marbles and ball bearings filling out that edge? The latter. Well, in layman’s terms D2 hasn’t got many bearings and marbles, and something like RWL-34 does.
Of course, you don’t WANT a scalpel edge like that for everything; as they require honing maintenance with use, wider angle edges are more rugged and stand up to heavier use. Many tasks don’t require extremely sharp knives. Sharp edges fold over or fragment with hard use. But I do find that many people want and like as sharp an edge as practicable on their folding pocket knives.
Otherwise? This is a better price on the TX020 than I have seen elsewhere, but it also is reported as heavier. The regular TX020 is something like 6.8 oz, which is chunky as it is -- this one is reported at 7.2 oz. Maybe cheaper heavier liners? Maybe cheaper hardware? Hard to say with Drop, and if major knife sellers like Knife Center are simply using the manufacturer's ad copy to discuss the knives instead of talking about them from personal experience, it's safe to say that the folks at Drop aren't going to have a better line of info, and if they did, the evidence suggests that they'd never bother to update the details in the ad copy. So who knows what it's made of, you won't know how much it weighs unless you order one and put it on a scale when it arrives.
I'm curious about them -- no one says the knives are bad and most of them say they're very well made -- but 7+ oz for a folding knife isn't all that practical as far as I'm concerned, so i haven't pulled the trigger yet. If you like heavy knives, or at least aren't concerned about them either in the pocket or in the hand, there might be a lot to like here based on some of the reviews.