Note: these items were sent for review.
A while back, my wife gifted me one of the first iterations of Leader Studio’s camo mouse pads. I loved the aesthetics of it, and it’s always found a home in random areas of my office. So when Leander Studio asked for a quick video chat, I was pumped to talk with the brand. On that chat we talked about how they were wanting to help craft work spaces which feel inviting, where people want to work and be there. This thinking and philosophy immediately clicked with me.
They sent me over a sampling of items to review, I took time to rearrange my entire desk. A new desk pad, mouse pad, and valet tray all arrived. They also sent over two of their leather pouches. They told me “no rush” and so I’ve been not rushing anything.
All I can say is that I love each of these items — they are exceptional. I will be buying and gifting these to people, because they are the exact perfect type of item for a gift: extremely high quality, and yet something most people won’t indulge in as a luxury for themselves. A perfect gift.
Materials & Quality
I’ll start by saying that each of the items sent, are absolutely top notch in quality. I received items from two different collections, so let’s talk about the workspace collection items first.
These items are hand finished in Pinehurst, NC, and are essentially all leather and wood. Here’s what Leander says about the leather and wood they use:
Our wood species includes the likes of American Black Walnut and Maple. Our leathers come from the some of the finest tanneries in the world including La Perla Azzura and Badalassi from the Tuscany region in Italy.
What I can tell you is that they are really nice. They feel hearty and durable, to the point where you don’t really worry about them getting banged up. The desk pad and mouse pad are made from laminating two pieces of leather together, so there’s no rough out side of leather. One side is smooth black, and the other is the camo print pattern.
The valet tray is very nicely finished wood, with the leather perfectly inlaid. What’s most surprising was how light the tray is when you pick it up. Once placed on the desk it sits nicely without worry.
Moving over to the everyday collection, the materials change slightly. These are all leather based items, both I received are the Flat Pack in black. They use two propriety materials.
The first is Leander Leather which is an American leather and has a finishing to make it water resistant and improve the durability. The zipper is not a YKK aquaguard, though it looks similar, it’s yet another proprietary items. It’s waterproof and the finishing is matte.
These pouches also feature metal hardware throughout. These are stout, and in hand they feel excellent and thick. They smell great too.
As I said, no corners are being cut on any of these items.
On the Desk
Back to the desk items, because I love these, they are vastly better than any others I have tried. I have a lot of valet trays around the house, and I’ve tried several leather desk mats (including some popular ones with cork backing) and these Leander items are in a different league.
Valet Tray
At first I tried the valet tray in my closet, where I kept another tray to hold my wallet and keys — and other odds and ends. But it wasn’t feeling quite right, and I had trouble making use of the pen tray section. So I moved it to my desk, and decided this would be the home of two items I grab a lot: my iPhone and Apple Pencil.
After a few days getting used to this, I can’t go back. I swapped this tray out for my old method, and for a couple of other valet trays, but none of them work well in comparison. There’s a couple of things going on here which make this better for this type of use:
- There’s no padding beyond the leather. This means that if you set our phone down with a slight drop, the pen won’t go rolling around, since the tray doesn’t bounce.
- There’s structure to the entire tray. Unlike most trays I have where there’s no structure beyond the leather, the wood keeps everything stable.
- Visually it looks purposeful on the desk. It’s making a statement by being there.
This isn’t the typical valet tray I buy, it doesn’t have one big area to dump things. It almost feels to force you not dumping things. This is a holder of items to keep everything else tidy. And, in that vein, it does that exceedingly well.
Desk & Mouse Pad
The desk and mouse pad are extremely good. I’ve previously had other leather desk pads and a synthetic leather desk pad. Both showed a lot of dents in the material after only a few months of use. The cork backed leather desk pad I was using, started to actually warp out of shape from a hot MacBook Pro sitting on it.
I’ve treated the Leander Desk pad no differently, and yet it looks the same as the day it arrived. It lays perfectly flat on the desk, has just the right amount of cushion for writing on. And has done a fantastic job resisting scuffs from my watch bracelets, and dents from changing out watch straps.
I use the mouse pad (which is pretty large) as a smaller desk pad to keep my Leica Q2 beside my desk. It’s been a great spot for keeping my camera handy, while giving it a softer spot when I am flipping it over to grab a memory card or swap a battery. It’s almost like it was custom made for it. I have used it with an actual mouse for my machines, and there’s no optical skipping I can detect — nice and smooth.
Both of these are best in class for leather pads.
In the Bag
Both of the Flat Pack pouches share the same design, with only the size being different. The Large is notebook sized, while the standard sized model is closer to a pen case. Both use a very nice leather which feels fantastic in hand, and has yet to pick up any marks — even after spending weeks riding at the bottom of my bags.
They are lined on the inside and the zippers open very smoothly. Because of the thickness of the materials, they don’t really stretch around things so the volume is rather static. However the materials also mean that what you put in the pouches have some level of protection on them, which is nice. I’ve found the large size more useful than the smaller size, but that’s only a right now consideration as any minor gear change could push me to favor the smaller size.
At the top there’s a single metal ring to attach the pouch to something, I’ve not found a use for that, but it mostly stays out of the way.
Flat pack pouches like this are always a give and take. They are fantastic for keeping items from spilling out, while also being slightly annoying to find your stuff inside of them. Where they work best is a less is more approach: not a junk drawer of pouches.
You might wonder more about the zipper, and why design your own — and while I don’t know with any authority, my guess is that they wanted to perfectly match the zipper to the leather. And that they have achieved, it’s quite something.
Both of these items are over engineered. They aren’t thin leather that you need to baby or it will break down. Treat them like a cordura pouch, and that’s where you are getting the value. I am not certain these will stick as my daily pouches, but I am certain I will be using them when I travel — they feel exceedingly fancy and something I would want to have out of my bag when traveling to get at my gear.
The leather is top notch, the construction is fantastic. They add more bulk that they likely reduce, but because of the structure your gear won’t end up as a lump on one side of the Flat Pack if you have it filled enough.
Overall
I am a big fan of all of these items. They are pictured accurately on the Leander website, so if you like what you see, then it’s unlikely you’ll be disappointed when you receive the items. I was rather shocked at how nice these were when they arrived — I didn’t expect the quality to be this good.
Highly recommend these items, and the brand generally. They make great gifts for people you really like, or yourself.
Buy here:
– Black X Camo Reversible Leather Desk Mat ($125)
– Black Leather Valet tray ($145)
– Black X Camo Reversible Leather Mouse Pad ($75)
– Everyday Professional Large Flat Pack ($115)
– Everyday Professional Flat Pack ($85)