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After the well received introduction of Leatherman Supertool 300 as replacement for the venerable Core, Leatherman shrunk the Supertool by half inch, and gave us the Rebar. It has since replaced the Blast family of full sized tools in Leatherman’s line up, and I would say it’s a worthy successor.
How useful a review of a discontinued Leatherman pocket multitool might be? Well it depends. The Leatherman Juice Pro has very subtle differences from the Juice's line flagship, the Xe6. Essentially it just adds two hidden small tools, a pair of tweezers and a small curved blade with mini serrations, known as a foil cutter. Thus, a potential buyer of the Xe6 might find this review helpful.
In a field of so many great keychain-size tools offered, why would you stop to give the Leatherman Style PS a second glance? The answer can be summed up in three letters: TSA. This bladeless offering is a great travel option. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not a half-baked compromise tool either.
Leatherman has never backed down from a challenge, and the Style is a fairly obvious attempt at recreating the infamous Victorinox Classic. The Classic is the most successful Swiss Army Knife in the history of Swiss Army Knives- so how does the Style stack up?
Here I'm going to look at one of Leatherman's latest keyring tool options. This is their third scissors based tool having been preceded by the Micra and the Squirt S4. The S4 has now been retired but the Mirca is still alive and kicking. The styling is very much taken from the Skeletool, Freestyle and MUT and is certainly eye catching and very modern looking.
I know this is a little tool that’s had plenty said about it already but I thought I might just throw my two pence in as well.
So for most of the year now we’ve all been hearing about this new Military Utility Tool from Leatherman. How it’s the greatest thing ever for those who ply their trade with an auto-rifle, whether they be soldier in the field or marksman on the range. And to be sure, servicing “black” rifles, namely the M16/AR15 family of weapons, is what the MUT was designed for.
Years ago Leatherman introduced their now legendary Micra, which has dominated the keychain market for years. So much so that when Leatherman decided to upgrade the concept with the Squirt line, the Micra held fast. It seemed that not only could the Micra beat the competition, it could also easily take on it's technically superior replacement! I always find it amusing that Leatherman is such a great company that even they can't compete with themselves!
I awaited rather impatiently the arrival of several Super Tool 300s that I had ordered before they came out. As luck would have it, I finally got them, and it is time to write a small review about my thoughts and ideas about Leatherman’s newest addition to the multi-tool family.
The Super Tool 300 is 3rd in a family of large heavy multi-tools. You can see its lineage in the older models. The first Super Tool came out in 1994 and was discontinued in 2001. That was quickly followed by the Super Tool 200 which had a run from 2001 to 2005. At this point, Leatherman produced the Core which was introduced in 2005 and is still being produced although there are talks that it may be discontinued soon, but who knows other then Leatherman. The Super Tool 300 is a 2009 model that had a September roll out.
To better understand the Super Tool 300, you have to examine its predecessors. The whole family is geared towards Industrial/Construction trades, where a larger and tougher tool is in high demand. Special mention should go out to another large multi-tool, the Surge, which will not be talked about in this short review as it belongs to another Leatherman family and doesn’t quite fit into the lineage of the Super Tool 300.
One could almost argue that the Core does not belong in this group, as it came out along with the Kick, Fuse, and Blast, which belong to another branch of the family. These all contain Zytel liners. However, the Core shares quite a bit with the Super Tool 300 as you shall see, and is deserving of its place in this review.
Lets take a closer look…
The Freestyle has been one of the most anxiously awaited models from Leatherman for some time, but has gone through a number of changes since it's inception. Originally it was expected to look like the Skeletool series, and in fact, we had heard about the Freestyle long before the Skeletool emerged. Still, at the 2008 SHOT Show I had seen three very similar variations of what was expected to be the Skeletool, Skeletool CX and the Freestyle. At the time, the Freestyle was expected to have the same basic layout of the Skeletool, only with a fixed “multipurpose” driver expected to fit both slotted and phillips screws, rather than the interchangeable bit drivers found on the Skeletool series.
What kind of people would write collect and review multitools? Quite simple really- we are designers and do-ers, outdoors types and indoor types, mechanics, doctors, problem solvers and problem makers. As such, we have, as a world spanning community, put every type, size and version of multitool, multifunction knife, pocket knife and all related products to every test we could manage in as many places and environments as there are.