Leatherman Wave Plus Review: Four Months of Pliers-First EDC, Toolbox, and Camp Duty

I bought my Leatherman Wave Plus with a specific job in mind: replace the drawer full of mismatched pliers, box cutters, and eyeglass screwdrivers that had accumulated by my back door. Four months and one cross-country move later, it has ridden on my belt through a kitchen remodel, two camping trips, a dozen flat-pack furniture builds, and more zip-tie emergencies than I can count. This is not a spec-sheet regurgitation — it is what actually happened to one specific tool under real, repeated use, including the parts where it annoyed me.

The short version: the pliers head is still the best reason to buy a Leatherman, the Plus update's outside-access blades genuinely changed how often I reached for it, and the screwdriver bit system is the one part of the design that never stopped being fiddly. Everything below is the long version.

First impressions and what's in the box

The Wave Plus ships in a plain cardboard box with the tool, a black nylon sheath with a belt loop and a snap closure, and a small paper manual that's mostly diagrams. No bit kit, no charging cable, no batteries — it's a fully mechanical tool, which is part of the appeal. Out of the box it weighs 8.6 ounces and closes to just over 4 inches, so it has real presence in a pocket; this is not a keychain gadget, it's a tool you carry because you plan to use it.

Fit and finish on my unit (stainless steel handles, black oxide coating on the working tools) was excellent — no play in the pivots, no burrs on the edges of the handle scales, and the pocket clip/lanyard ring felt solidly riveted rather than just pinned on. Leatherman's 25-year warranty is also worth noting up front, because it colors how you use the tool: I was far less precious about tossing it in a dusty toolbox than I would have been with a boutique folding knife.

The pliers: still the reason to buy a Leatherman

Every Leatherman lives or dies by its pliers, and this is where the Wave Plus earns its price. The jaw opens wide enough to grip a 3/8-inch bolt head, the replaceable wire cutters bit into 12-gauge solid copper wire without rolling the edge (I tested this deliberately, twice, on scrap Romex from the remodel), and the handles' spring-loaded opening action means you can flick it open one-handed once you know the motion. The gearing on the pliers head feels noticeably tighter than a $25 generic multi-tool I compared it against side by side — less flex under load, no perceptible slop in the jaw when torquing a stuck hose clamp.

Where the pliers head shows its age is leverage on genuinely stubborn fasteners. The handles are short compared to a dedicated 6-inch linesman plier, so on a rusted bolt I eventually gave up and grabbed a real wrench. That's not really a fair complaint — it's a folding tool — but it's the honest limit of what "one tool for everything" can do.

Tool-by-tool: blades, screwdrivers, and the rest

The Wave Plus carries 18 tools, but in four months of use I found myself repeatedly reaching for about six of them. The 420HC combo blade (part plain edge, part serrated) held a working edge through cutting cardboard, rope, and packing tape for close to three weeks of daily kitchen-remodel use before it needed a touch-up. The wood/metal file surprised me — I used it far more than expected to clean up a rough-cut PVC pipe and to deburr a metal bracket, and its coarse and fine faces are genuinely different grits rather than a marketing distinction.

The 420HC serrated blade is a dedicated second cutting tool, and having both a plain and serrated edge on the same multi-tool, accessible independently, is a real advantage over cheaper tools that give you only one blade. The awl with thread loop punched through canvas webbing cleanly when I was repairing a tent guy-line strap. The can and bottle openers work exactly as advertised and got real use at a campsite with no other opener in sight.

The screwdriver situation is the one part of this tool I'd flag as a genuine, not nitpicky, con. The Wave Plus uses Leatherman's proprietary double-ended bit system, which snaps into a driver tool on the tool itself. It works, and the bits (Phillips #1/#2, small/medium flathead) cover most needs, but swapping bits mid-job means unfolding the tool, popping the bit out, flipping or replacing it, and reseating it — three fumbly steps versus just grabbing a different-sized driver on a cheap multi-bit tool. On the kitchen cabinet install, I dropped a bit into a gap behind the cabinets in the process and had to fish it out with a magnet on a stick.

The outside-access blades: the actual reason to pick "Plus"

This is the feature that separates the Wave Plus from the standard Wave, and it's the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade in four months of carry. On the original Wave, both blades are locked inside the tool body — you have to unfold the pliers first to get to them, which means two hands and a few seconds every single time. On the Wave Plus, the 420HC combo blade and the serrated blade both open from the outside of the closed tool, one-handed, thumb-stud style, exactly like a normal folding knife.

In practice this meant I actually used the blade for quick cuts — breaking down shipping boxes, slicing zip ties, opening blister packs — instead of avoiding it because unfolding the whole tool felt like overkill for a five-second job. I'd estimate I used the blade three to four times more often than I would have with a standard Wave, purely because the friction of accessing it dropped to near zero. If you're deciding between the Wave and the Wave Plus, this is the deciding feature, full stop.

Weeks of daily carry: EDC, toolbox, and campsite

I carried the Wave Plus in the sheath on my belt for the first six weeks, then switched to dropping it loose in a jacket pocket once the belt carry started catching on car seatbelts. On a typical day it came out for opening packages, trimming a loose thread, and prying open paint cans. During the kitchen remodel it lived in my tool bag and got pressed into service for stripping wire, holding a nut while I turned a bolt from the other side, and — more than once — as an improvised pry bar for stuck cabinet shims, which is exactly the kind of abuse a folding tool shouldn't have to take but survived without complaint.

On two camping trips it handled the obvious jobs (whittling a tent stake, opening cans, cutting paracord to length) plus one less obvious one: the pliers' wire cutters trimmed a bent tent pole's frayed shock cord cleanly enough that I could re-thread it. The one carry complaint that came up repeatedly: at 8.6 ounces and over 4 inches closed, it's noticeably heavier and bulkier in a pocket than a slim keychain multi-tool, and it printed visibly through thin gym shorts. This is a tool you carry on a belt, in a bag, or in a jacket — not something you forget is in your jeans.

Sharpening and maintenance notes

After about three weeks of the kitchen remodel, the combo blade had dulled enough that it was tearing packing tape instead of slicing it. Ten minutes on a ceramic rod brought the edge back most of the way, and a proper pass on a whetstone a few weeks later restored it fully — the 420HC steel isn't a premium exotic alloy, but it's easy to sharpen at home with basic gear, which matters more in practice than raw edge retention for a tool that's going to see mixed-use abuse anyway.

The pivots needed a drop of light machine oil around the two-month mark after the tool picked up sawdust and drywall grit; before that, opening the pliers had developed a faint gritty feel. A quick rinse under the tap (it's stainless, so this is fine), a full dry, and a drop of oil on each pivot point restored the smooth action completely. Leatherman's official recommendation is the same routine every few months of heavy use, and it takes under five minutes.

Compared to a cheap multi-tool

I ran the Wave Plus side by side against a roughly $25 generic 14-in-1 multi-tool from a hardware store for two weeks to see how much the price premium actually buys. The cheap tool's pliers had visible jaw misalignment out of the box, its wire cutters rolled after one use on the same 12-gauge copper wire, and its "stainless" handles showed surface rust after a single rainy weekend of yard work. The Wave Plus showed none of these problems. Where the cheap tool won: it was lighter, its flathead screwdriver tips were larger and less fiddly to swap, and losing it wouldn't have stung. If you need a tool for occasional light use and don't mind replacing it in a year, the cheap option is defensible. If you want something you can lean on for a decade of real work, the price gap closes fast.

Compared to the standard Leatherman Wave

Leatherman still sells the standard Wave (without the "Plus" designation) at a slightly lower price, and the two are close enough that it's worth being specific about the difference. Mechanically, the pliers head, file, saw-toothed blade options, and overall build are near-identical. The two changes are the outside-access blades described above, and slightly redesigned scissors that are marginally easier to open on the Plus. Everything else — weight, closed length, warranty, steel — carries over unchanged. Given how much the outside-access blades changed my actual usage pattern, I'd steer almost anyone toward paying the small premium for the Plus version unless the price gap in a specific sale is unusually large.

Who should buy this

The Wave Plus makes the most sense for people who will actually use the pliers regularly — homeowners doing their own repairs, campers and overlanders, tradespeople who want a backup tool in a truck door pocket, or anyone who's tired of a cheap multi-tool failing them at the wrong moment. It's overkill as a keychain gadget and it's not a replacement for dedicated pliers or a full screwdriver set on a real job site. If your use case is mostly "occasionally open a box and cut a zip tie," a smaller, lighter tool like a Leatherman Skeletool will serve you better and cost less.

Verdict

Four months in, the Wave Plus has earned a permanent spot on my belt during any project weekend, and it's the tool that made me stop keeping a junk drawer of single-purpose gadgets by the back door. The pliers are genuinely excellent, the outside-access blades solved a real annoyance from the standard Wave, and the build quality held up to real abuse without complaint. The screwdriver bit swaps are fiddly, the weight and bulk are real trade-offs for pocket carry, and the price is a legitimate jump over bargain-bin alternatives — but for anyone who will actually use a multi-tool weekly rather than let it sit in a drawer, this is money well spent.