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EACHE v MAIKES v BERFINE leather straps

Discussion area for watch straps, boxes, winders and other accessories.
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baldrick
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EACHE v MAIKES v BERFINE leather straps

Post by baldrick »

Hi, all,

A very quick post for now.

I recently picked up a selection of leather straps from these three brands from Amazon.

I'd say they are mid- to low-cost straps (on Baldrick's totally scientific and completely not arbitrary strap pricing scale), being around USD 15-20or so (the prices seem to fluctuate a bit depending on colour, size and day of the week).

The pictures of each strap are very similar, which led me to wonder if they were from the same factory, just re-branded. Having now received the straps, I'd say they either are from the same factory, or it's a hell of a coincidence how similar they are. None has specific branding on the strap itself and, placed side-by-side, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish them (at least from the top).

There are, however, minor differences that may influence a choice of one over the other.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Berfine straps have quick-release bars, and for that reason alone would be my pick of the three.

The Eache and Maikes straps come with normal spring bars (included). They also come with a cheapo strap-changing tool, which is a nice touch but probably unlikely to make much difference to seasoned strap swappers.

Eache and Berfine come packaged in a cardboard box, the Maikes in a sealed plastic pouch inside a padded envelope. Again, not really much difference but maybe a benefit either way depending on how you store your straps.

On to the straps themselves, I'll focus on the Berfine, but there's really no difference between them as noted above.

The straps are what I would describe as "lightly padded", giving a nice thickness towards the lugs that steers clear of "chunky" and never goes to "paper-thin". I'd say maybe 3 to 4 mm thickness by the lugs measured in the centre of the strap, 2mm at the edges and towards the buckle. Overall decent.

Stitching is tight and generally even, colour is more ivory than white. On the brown strap it is slightly skewed at one of the lugs, not sure how I feel about that.

The hardware is brushed and solid.

Size is fine - I saw some reviews saying the straps were too short, but you can see from the pics that there's plenty of length on my 7.25 wrist.


Out of the box, the colours are darker than they appear in Amazon's pictures. However, one of the reasons I went for these waxed leather straps is the nice play of colour from dark to light that you can see in the Amazon pics. It's not as pronounced in real life, but perhaps will become more prominent as time goes by. You can see it on the picture of the brown strap - the difference between the strap and the keepers.

Generally, they seem well put together for the price (though things tend to be obscenely expensive where I am, so my frame of reference is a bit skewed).

Would I buy again? Yep - and have ordered a couple more of the light brown and "crimson" already. Time will tell how durable they are, but so far I am pretty pleased.

Link here:



Quick and dirty phone pics of the dark brown and blue straps attached (also one of a Hirsch strap on the blue Seiko starlight for comparison).ImageImageImageImageImageImageImage

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baldrick
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Re: EACHE v MAIKES v BERFINE leather straps

Post by baldrick »

Adding a couple more pics of the packaging, with a Barton box thrown in for good measure.

You can see the Maikes and Eache blue bands are virtually identical. Interestingly though, it seems the Berfine and Eache straps both have the slightly skewed stitching at the top of the strap, but the stitching on the Maikes strap is pretty straight. ImageImage

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Re: EACHE v MAIKES v BERFINE leather straps

Post by TheJohnP »

Fascinating!
Thanks for posting this thread.
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EACHE v MAIKES v BERFINE leather straps

Post by cheddar »

Great thread idea! I had been meaning to write something about the Eache straps I’ve gotten, so I’ll just add it here. [emoji846]

I’ve had one of the straps like you got, the padded, oiled leather in blue. It’s been my favorite of the Eache straps I’ve had. Very, very similar to a G&Co strap I have and like. [emoji848] (Actually, as I look at some of the G&Co vintage straps, the stitch and buckle also look very similar to my Eache vintage straps).

Speaking of my Eache vintage straps, here’s what I have:

Image

The darkest one is their “crazy horse,” I think. Has a nice matte look to it. The lighter brown I wore on my Alpinist and it worked very well. The rally strap was on my Intra Matic chrono, worn probably about 20 times and you can see some wrinkling in the buckle holes. The croc-print I haven’t worn, but it compares favorably to my Fluco croc-print out of the box.

Downsides: visible glue in some of the stitch holes, the aforementioned wrinkling, plastic-y look/feel to the strap edges. Upsides: strap leather feels good and non-plastic-y, price, no splitting of the strap layers so far (like CNS leather straps do).

At the price, I would get these every time over CNS leather. When I want something that is a bit better finished, I go to WatchGecko, Fluco, or similar.
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