Leather vs. Nylon Gear

[CAL]

What do you prefer and why?

[FerretLE426]

I prefer Leather as it is easier to maintain. My personal opinion is that Nylon after a couple of months starts to look ratty while a little elbow grease in Kiwi can restore your leather to almost new.
The advantages of Nylon is that there are more variations easier to adapt to mission specific setup and is less expensive than leather. Nylon is also significatly lighter. My chiropracter recommends nylon for better back health.
I use black leather for Patrol Duties and I use nylon web gear and MOLE system for team use.
My two cents.

[CAL]

I prefer Leather as it is easier to maintain. My personal opinion is that Nylon after a couple of months starts to look ratty while a little elbow grease in Kiwi can restore your leather to almost new.
The advantages of Nylon is that there are more variations easier to adapt to mission specific setup and is less expensive than leather. Nylon is also significatly lighter. My chiropracter recommends nylon for better back health.
I use black leather for Patrol Duties and I use nylon web gear and MOLE system for team use.
My two cents.
Good info.

[Feet]

Leather holds up well. Theres Safariland and then theres some other miniscule companies that want to be as good as Safariland.:D
Nylon is for rookies!

[DD78]

Nylon is Bush League unless it is worn with a snowsuit or on bike patrol. Given your location, what does that tell you?

[Maverick1701]

I prefer leather over Nylon...

1. All of the nylon rigs I have seen really didn't look as sharp and squared away as the leather duty rigs.
2. The people in our academy class who had Nylon gear had a hellish time trying to get dirt and clay out of the material after rolling around on the ground.

It is much lighter though....

[Shadowcop92]

I prefer Leather as it is easier to maintain. My personal opinion is that Nylon after a couple of months starts to look ratty while a little elbow grease in Kiwi can restore your leather to almost new.
The advantages of Nylon is that there are more variations easier to adapt to mission specific setup and is less expensive than leather. Nylon is also significatly lighter. My chiropracter recommends nylon for better back health.
I use black leather for Patrol Duties and I use nylon web gear and MOLE system for team use.
My two cents.

I too feel the same way as Ferret, nylon on call outs and leather duty gear when on the streets. Leather looks better and more professional in my opinion and does not fray and acceptable to quick touch ups. We use clarino for regular duty gear and switching over to flat black for motor gear.

[Broke Hoss]

I went to nylon along with other equipment changes about 1 yr ago after a back injury. I agree with the "less professional" look of most plain nylon gear.

I'm wearing Bianchi Elite; it is actually nylon but looks like leather complete with the basketweave. You can get the outer belt with the good old silver Sam Brown buckle; can't tell the diffence by appearance alone. My radio case, OC holder & silent key holder are all my old leather gear & fit right in with it. I reccomend you look into it if you're considering the change. It made a world of difference for me. Particularly the padded duty belt.

[Etho]

I watched nylon gear fall to pieces in the academy by the people who bought it versus those of with leather, it pretty much still looked brand new. They aren't exactly used very hard in the academy, whatcha think nylons gonna do on the street?

[DD78]

Where some of my stuff rubs together (my radio holder and flashlight holder for example) The leather actually wears away exposing the flesh color rather than the black dye.

In the case of another officer here, he tackled a guy in a parking lot and skidded across the asphalt on his belt (it was a great hit too). It scuffed his shit up pretty good.

In both cases the liberal use of some leather dye made it so you can't tell that the gear is scuffed unless you're right up on it (I mean within a couple inches).

Nylon would have been destroyed with broken threads. No dye is going to fix that.