Somewhere in a drawer is a multitool you bought at a petrol station. The pliers wobble, the blade folds on your finger, and the whole thing has seized with rust because the pivots were never meant to move twice. It cost about twelve euro. It owes you nothing.
The Leatherman Wave Plus is built on the opposite premise. Tim Leatherman spent three years in the 1970s trying to fix a leaking car and failing hotel plumbing with a cheap folding knife. The tool he designed instead became the one most people picture when they hear the word multitool. The Wave Plus carries eighteen tools on one frame: needle-nose pliers, replaceable wire cutters, four screwdrivers, a saw, scissors, and two blades you open with one hand from the outside. The steel is 420HC, hard enough to hold an edge and to take one back on a stone. Leatherman backs the whole tool with a 25-year guarantee and repairs it in Portland when something finally gives.
It costs 159,00 euro. That is more than ten of the petrol-station tools. On the day you buy it, the cheap one looks clever. Then the cheap one's cutter chips on the first copper wire, the pivot rusts stiff over a winter, and it goes in the bin. You buy another. The Wave Plus is still on your belt. If a spring breaks in year nineteen, Leatherman fixes it for nothing. The wire cutters unbolt and swap out, so the one part that wears becomes a two-minute replacement.
| Leatherman Wave Plus | Petrol-station multitool | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 159,00 euro | about 12 euro |
| Warranty | 25 years, repaired in Portland | none |
| Wire cutters | replaceable inserts | chip and stay chipped |
| Over 20 years | one tool | a drawer of dead ones |
A multitool earns its place by working the one time you need it, in the dark, on the roadside, when nothing else is to hand. The cheap one fails that test the first time. The Wave Plus passes it for a quarter of a century.
Verdict: 159,00 euro once, guaranteed for 25 years, against a slow drip of twelve-euro tools that seize in a season.