Leatherman Squirt PS4

Very good size for a keyring. The knife and the scissors are incredibly sharp. I used to have a Swiss Army knife before this for 10 years but I love the PS4 more. I was used to the sharpness of the Swiss Army knife so I immediately cut my finger with the PS4, it is so much sharper.

I used the plier for some electrical amendments on my bike and it can be used very well too.

This is my second small Leatherman, the other being the Mica. I also have the Charge TTi multitool. So what does this tell you? It tells you that I think Leatherman make a great multitool and this little gem is just that. The blade is sharp as are the scissors and the pliers can grip way above what you would expect from such a diminutive set. It sits unobtrusively on my keyring and has already proven its worth several times and I've only had it a few weeks.

These make great gifts for someone who has everything (except one of these) and are worth having on you or in the car for those moments where you say: "Damn, I wish I had a...!"

I have both the Leatherman Micra and PS4 mini multitools and I thought it might be useful to do a review of one against the other to give a good insight into both. I have therefore posted this review against both tools.

In theory at least, the Leatherman Squirt PS4 is probably my ideal everyday pocket knife. I am an office worker on week days and an outdoorsy Dad at the week end and the combination of size, tools and quality on the PS4 is about as good as I can get at the moment. It looks un-macho and professional in its smart black anodized livery and quite importantly to me I can whip out a blade or scissor set, use it and snap it back in in a flash. Very useful in an office environment in the UK where carrying a knife of any sort often does your image no good at all. I cannot bear feeling helpless and having to ask my Facilities people to do tiny, silly jobs for me and so I always carry a pocket tool of some description wherever I go (except airports!).

The problem is that I have had not one but two failed PS4s. On both occasions the reedy spring bar on the scissors snapped. I cannot even be sure that on either occasion this was during use as I only noticed when pulling the scissors out on the next occasion. I find it difficult to envisage how this bar could snap as it cannot be put under any extra strain - it is only required (and indeed capable of) pushing the scissors open. It cannot be put under any extra strain by for example cutting heavy materials. This is a shame, because although the scissors are small they are effective enough for most of the things I want to do with them.

The best thing about the PS4 is that all of the blades are on the outside, allowing for very quick and fuss-free deployment. It was this issue which put me off the Leatherman Micra, along with its lack of pliers which I find surprisingly useful on the PS4. However, because I have become so dependent upon my pocket tools I concluded that I simply had to get a hardy back-up to my PS4 to cover the increasingly frequent periods during which it has no useable scissors or it has had to be sent back under warranty for replacement. Enter the Micra.

Right. First off, the Micra has no pliers. No wire cutting, picking up hot things, tweaking metal parts on my kids' toys, or easily picking up dubious objects. However, this gap is partly filled by the Micra's tweezers. Now, I like having tweezers. I am of an age where the odd facial hair needs nipping out. Both I and my kids frequently get splinters. Kids' toys come with ridiculously small screws and other parts these days. However, experience tells me that removable tweezers usually get lost at some point. The Micra's cannot as they are attached to the knife. And they are very good for fine work and yet are robust enough to last a very long time. I like them a lot. I would be reluctant to use the scissors on even electrical wire, although I suppose I could do so at a push. I personally do not miss tweezers on the PS4 - the pliers on it are very good and are capable of surprisingly sensitive work such as yanking out individual hairs and even nipping splinters out. Kids however do not usually react well to splinters being tackled with pliers!

The pliers on the PS4 are very good considering their size. They open nice and wide and so can tackle quite a wide range of jobs. The quality of the PS4 is such that you can really clamp down hard on things and the tips allign so well you can pluck individual hairs out with it! The profile of the jaws allow you to tackle bolts with minimal slippage.

Second bad point on the Micra for me. You have to open the body of the Micra to get to any of the tools. I do not like being seen to open up a rather macho-looking mini-Transformer contraption like some kind of movie-based assassin wielding an illegal butterfly knife just to cut through a bit of packing tape around a box of copying paper. Also, for very tiny "snip `n' go" jobs, it is a faff. You spend longer getting the tool out than on the job itself. Accessing the scissors is quicker - just open the two sides of the tool and you are done - but anything else requires a further process. Not a huge deal, but it makes me prefer the PS4.

However, what the Micra definitely does have in its favour, and the reason why I will no doubt on occasion still carry it even when my PS4 is not broken, is the sheer robustness of it. I very much doubt that (gross abuse and neglect aside) that this tool will ever fail me. The functionality that it does have will always be there. If I was being cast onto a desert island with one mini multitool, it would definitely be the Micra. Its scissors are big and meaty for a mini multitool. Its spring mechanism of the scissors is solidly engineered and clearly is not about to go anywhere it shouldn't. Sure, it may take a little longer to get the tools out of it compared to the PS4, but quick access to broken scissors isn't of much use to anyone. The overall construction of the Micra is much simpler than that of the PS4 which explains the price differential. The "soft lock" on each of the blades is through a very simple but effective steel leaf cut from the case which presses down on the pivot end of each blade. The PS4 uses individually pivoted levers on each blade (similar to the mechanisms on many other quality pocket knives) which although results in a considerably sweeter and smother action is perhaps no more effective. Although this more complicated mechanism is perhaps more prone to contamination by grit, the Micra's scissors also rely on pivoted lever springs.

One thing is that the tips of scissors on the Micra are needle sharp and because the tips cross over when the tool is closed up, there is a risk of scratching or cutting yourself if you are not careful when you open them. I have taken the sharpness out of the tips with a sharpening stone and this has made all of the difference.

Out of the box the PS4 looks the better of the two, in my opinion anyway. But the Micra is far from ugly with its very fine (brushed / tumbled?) stainless steel finish and I suspect that after a year or two of moderate use the PS4's anodized finish will look a bit worse for wear, whereas the finish of the Micra does not look at all susceptible to marking. Again, the Micra is what it is, but I think that it will be better at staying what it is than most mini multitools, and in my opinion the Gerber multitools look and feel like toys out of Christmas crackers in comparison. Both the Micra and the PS4 are in my opinion beautifully compact, very well engineered, solid little nuggets, albeit that the Micra comes across as a bit more utilitarian. However, it should be noted that the burred / toothed screwheads on the Micra are a lot less kind to mobile phones and other delicate potential pocket companions than the flattened rivets of the PS4.

Then there is the price. I try as hard as I can not to become too sentimentally attached to my pocket multitools (not been hard with the PS4 because I am on my third one in four months!). I do not want to leave them behind for fear of losing them or being confiscated. To this end I have a coupe of cheap and nasty (but broadly effective) mini multitools which I picked up on holiday in the States for $10 each. I was stopped going into Cheltenham Gold Cup with one of these - I just hid it behind a nearby bush and recovered it again when I came out, but it would have been no big deal if I had lost it. The Micra would not be too bad a loss either at just £25, but the PS4 would hurt a bit at £40. A $10 multitool in the pocket is worth infinitely more than a £100 one sat in a safe at home when you find yourself in a tight spot!

I do not like the file on the PS4 that much - it is too coarse to be of any use on one side, missing the opportunity of a very fine diamond file on one of the sides. There is no point on the end to use for cleaning under fingernails or as an awl, just a bizarre squared-off chisel-like end. The finer file on the other side is a bit too coarse for fingernail work, but it just about serves this purpose. The file on the Micra is much better albeit just one-sided, which seems like a lost opportunity. But it has a curved point which at a push just about serves as an awl to make a screw pilot hole in wood. The file itself is very good - more than fine enough for a decent nail file, but not quite fine enough to e.g. sharpen a fishing hook. It seems strange that Leatherman has missed a trick on both of these mini multitools where each blade must fully justify the very precious space which they take up.

I personally very much like the fine flathead screwdriver on the end of the bottle opener on the Micra - perfect for eyeglasses screws. The PS4 can just about do this using the flattened tip of its flat Phillips screwdriver blade, but only with a bit of a touch-up with a sharpening stone (note - this modification may invalidate the 25 year Leatherman warranty!). The Micra of course still has a dedicated flat phillips blade in addition to the fine flathead. I have to say that I find these blades on both knives to be very effective with quite a broad range of phillips screws, unlike the full crosshead blades I have tried on a number of other knives. They cannot cope with too much torque though without chewing up both themselves and the screwhead.

The medium flathead screwdriver blades and straight knife blades on both knives are perhaps about as good and strong as it is possible to get on tools of this size. It is well documented that the bottle openers on both are not particularly good and take a couple of careful goes, but they do work. Read more ›