Review: Peak Designs Clutch

Peak Designs’ new emergence onto the camera market has been another tale of success through Kickstarter. After garnishing over a half a million dollars in backings they’re well on their way to becoming a company of photographers focusing on making their craft better. The Peak Design Clutch is a typical hand strap with its claim to fame being its ability to be used with or without a battery pack and on practically any camera system.

Functionality★★
The Clutch is built to hold your hand on the camera. Thats about it. It does that halfway decently; it gives you a better grip than a just holding the camera obviously but it quickly begins to loosen over time. The Clutch is fastened to the bottom of the camera using a mount attaching to the ¼” screw on the base of your camera preventing you from using a tripod while the strap attached. Instead of a hand-based screw flap on the attachment, you need to use a coin, keys, or screw driver, every time you want to attach it to your camera. Its the most difficult hand strap to attach to my camera I’ve ever used.

Design and Aesthetics★★★★
Overall this is a great looking strap. Its fairly subtle which is why you want a hand strap. It’s comfortable over time (if you can keep your hand inside), but it doesn’t feel safe because of how it rocks around on the bottom hole. The design benefit of the bottom plate that comes with the Clutch is that it has four attachment spaces. What this means is you can have your Clutch and your Peak Design Slide attached to the same camera at once which is a cool benefit I haven’t seen yet on a camera strap without an extra accessory.

Durability★★★★
The Peak Design’s Clutch is well built and made out of high-end materials for the price. The bottom plate is made of metal and the strap itself is stitched well. The only thing I’d worry about is the plastic quick releases which attach the strap to the plate, which they ship back ups.

Value★★★
I love start-ups. I thoroughly enjoy buying from Kickstarter campaigns because they are usually crafted with care for their craft. However they are almost always over priced because they need to be. Peak Design fits in this category. However I don’t see the Clutch delivering that expected value. It looks nice and feels nice, but limits my ability to use my camera and doesn’t  give me any extra feeling of protection. Therefore, I can’t claim it to be all that valuable. I have a lot of respect for Peak Designs and like the feel of hand straps but the Clutch falls short for me.