Product Review: The MetMo Pocket Driver Is An Excellent Everyday Handy Tool
Disclaimer: I received no compensation for writing this review, and I do not receive any compensation if you choose to purchase a Pocket Driver. I was sent a Pocket Driver for review and it will be sent back once the article is published. At no point prior to publication did MetMo review this article or provide input.
Main image source: www.metmo.co.uk
Enshitification - the gradual degradation of a good or service’s functionality, as part of a cycle in which the good or service first offers benefits to users to attract them, then pursues more and more profits at the expense of users:
Example use: There's been a significant enshitification of this brand’s appliances in just this year alone.
As shocking as the term may appear, it’s already reached some level of adoption, to the extent that the definition above is not mine, but rather comes from a re-working of the much more “official” dictionary.com.
Even if you’ve never heard of the term, if you’ve found youself recently saying things like “why is this bag half the size but double the price”, or “I just bought this a year ago and it’s already wrecked, they used to last forever!", then you’ve experienced enshitification.
There is nothing pre-determined about making products worse. This is a deliberate choice made by managers, who, long-separated from the activities of conceiving and making products, cut corners to give you the least possible for the most amount of money (which is exactly what they’re incentivized to do).
Indeed, it used to be that businesses focused on doing their best work to please their customers as much as possible and revenues followed; sure, sometimes revenues might have been flat and profits middling, but businesses took pride in their work, customers were happy, and a balance was achieved.
Now, any company not growing to infinity is seen as a failure, and to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of Wall Street analysts (but crucially, not customers), their goods and services have become an afterthought to you paying as much, and as often, as possible.
In other words, if there were a way that Company X could just have you send them money regularly in return for nothing, they would pursue it and not think twice.
Thankfully, not everyone is complacent in the face of the enshitification of seemingly everything. Dedicated, smaller players are pushing back, and today, thanks to their tremendous passion channeled via crowd-funding and small-scale manufacturing, it is possible to find well-made, functional items that you can reasonably expect to pass on to your kids or grand-kids.
These smaller outfits don’t have to carry massive overheads, which cuts both ways. Unburdened by heavy fixed costs, companies can focus on the products and services themselves, however the lack of a marketing budget means they tend to fly under the radar.
As a result, finding quality isn’t easy nowadays: either you get lucky via the Instagram algorithm, or in some even luckier cases, these smaller shops find you.
That was the case for me, when Sean, the co-founder of a company called MetMo, reached out to me about a feature on my website.
MetMo: A company by engineers, for anyone
MetMo’s “About Us” page can be summarized in a couple of key sentences:
“MetMo is not about producing low grade products for mass market re-selling. Instead, we focus on low volume ideas that can be interesting and more fun for us all to share our love for engineering and fascination with mechanical design.”
“We love to over-engineer the simple things and bringing large and otherwise unobtainable things into the miniature world, so we can all enjoy them on a new level.”
MetMo got its start making fidget “toys” but seems to have honed in on creating tools, specifically those based on historical designs, which brings us to the Pocket Driver.
MetMo claims “Pocket Driver is perfect for building anything!”. Big words, let’s dig in to that claim…(Image source: www.metmo.co.uk)
I’m an engineer myself, and my academic and professional training have heavily influenced my personal tastes.
Before I buy anything that I plan on using consistently, my first instinct is to dive deeply into the research, trying to understand as well as possible all of the possible options, in search of the highest possible quality for my budget.
After all, if I have to (or want to) use something, shouldn’t I just get the best upfront and be done with it, rather than replace a broken item which provided a sub-optimal experience?
All this is to say that right-off-the bat, I’m on-board with MetMo’s value proposition, but what about the Pocket Driver?
Does it actually deliver on MetMo’s desire to create quality tools?
Well, indications from the Pocket Driver’s Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns are that the market has been highly receptive to MetMo’s efforts.
Call me convinced as well, though there are some key areas I’d love to see addressed if there is to be a Pocket Driver 2.0 some day.
The Pocket Driver, a modern interpretation of a classic tool
As much as manufacturing techniques have evolved since the dawn of the Industrial Age, the basics have stayed pretty constant, in fact during research for this review I found out that the concept of the screw originated over 900 years BC!
Of course, even if the underlying concept has existed a long time, the ensuing centuries have given plenty of time for refinement, and occasionally, you can move forward by looking back, which is exactly what MetMo have attempted with the Pocket Driver.
Though the Pocket Driver presents several features that distinguish it from what you probably picture as a “screwdriver”, its main selling point is the inclusion of a ratcheting mechanism, which according to the brochure which comes packed with the Pocket Driver, was patented by a Mr. Conrad Baumann in the 1920’s (with the Pocket Driver page mentioning the mechanism itself actually dates back to 1871), and branded under “Baumann-Weltrecord”.
In several use-cases I’ll cover later I found this feature to be quite well done, but before diving into this crucial aspect of the Pocket Driver, let’s start at the beginning.
The Pocket Driver comes in a small-ish, foil-stamped boe with MetMo’s name and logo. In the box, you’ll find a small, moulded paper-pulp holder which contains the Pocket Driver, two bits, a small Allen key to adjust bits that would otherwise be too small for the chuck, and the information brochure I mentioned above.
Overall, it’s a very simple presentation but I’m not going to deduct any points for not being overly fancy. If the box doesn’t serve a functional purpose, it’s destined for the recycling bin anyways, so the less material used and sent via postage, the better.
The Pocket Driver itself is quite compact, measuring in at 103 mm tall by 27 mm wide by 20 mm thick according to the product page. There are three options from which you can choose, all listed at different price points:
The MetMo Black Pocket Driver, 119.81 euros
The MetMo Black Steel Pocket Driver, 159.75 euros
The MetMo Stainless Steel Pocket Driver, 199.69 euros
Build quality and form factor
The most immediately tangible difference between the three Pocket Drivers is their mass (109 grams for the Black Pocket Driver going up to 149 grams and 230 grams for the other two options respectively), and I was sent what I suppose you could call the “good” option (Black Pocket Driver) in the good-better-best selection MetMo offers for the Pocket Driver.
It’s interesting that the price goes up with weight; my experience in the watch world has always led me to assume that stainless steel is your cheapest, baseline option, with prices going up from there if any other material is used, especially if benefits such as weight savings are offered as they are with aluminum.
Curious to know more, I reached out to Sean, who offered the following comments:
“Aluminium is the most cost effective metal for us to machine, with; material cost, machining time, and shipping weight all much lower than steel. So that’s what bumps the price up for steel. The stainless steel also goes through other ops like polishing that add to the cost. Outside of pure manufacturing costs, the aluminium version will be just fine under normal use, but the Stainless Steel version is extremely hard wearing and is built to take some serious abuse.”
In the case of the Pocket Driver, my feeling is that your good-better-best ranking won’t be due to price as much as it will your intended uses, and in any case I don’t think you will be disappointed with the build quality.
Even in its lightest variant, the Pocket Driver feels well-made, I didn’t notice any rough edges and the black anodized coating seemed well-applied (over time, this will likely come off with use, though to some this will be a positive as it will form part of the tool’s acquired patina).
I especially like the satisfying “click” that the Driver handle makes when you flip it back to closed mode, and it offers enough resistance when you open it to indicate not only that it is well-made, but also that it won’t accidentally come open during transportation and storage.
Functionally, when I put one of the provided bits into the chuck, I was nicely surprised by how hard I had to pull to remove it, thanks to what MetMo describes as a “neodymium magnetic bit holder”; the fit felt snug and secure, and you have the option of the Allen key adjustment if ever the fit isn’t satisfactory for you.
Overall, the Pocket Driver felt like it was well-put together; not a luxury experience where components glide against each other, but certainly several steps above budget options.
One last element about the Pocket Driver’s construction which doesn’t have to do directly with how the tool feels ,but certainly is worth mentioning, is that it is made in the UK.
To be transparent, I’m half-English but that’s not why I have to point out the Pocket Driver’s origins. Many people associate “Made in China” with “cheap”, and the Pocket Driver could definitely have been made there - and made well - for a fraction of its actual build cost.
It would likely still have been a very well-built tool.
The assocation of low-quality with Chinese-made goods is unfair; skilled craftspeople absolutely exist there, but the problem is so many companies use them as low-cost labor and give them cheap specifications off of which to work.
Think about this: if you gave a UK machine shop the same, low-end specifications, you’d also get junk, it would just be more expensive junk!
My sense is that as engineers, the folks at MetMo understand all of this, so the decision to make the Pocket Driver in the UK likely has to do with practical considerations such as easily being able to speak with their partners, and a more nebulous one which I nevertheless stand behind: preserving manufacturing heritage and know-how.
Ultimately, the more places and people that know how to make things like the Pocket Driver, the better off we all are. The pendulum has swung perhaps a bit too much towards offshoring, and every project that can stay in-country will help swing that pendulum back towards equilibrium; if you believe this as well then the Pocket Driver delivers a positive experience in-hand that goes beyond simply the objective quality of its construction.
Materials
Materials are where you will quickly separate actual tools that can accomplish tasks from objects that just happen to look like tools and will break down under the slightest duress.
Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to find out the materials from which so many objects are actually made of?
Not so with the Pocket Driver, where each Pocket Driver page lists in technical detail exactly what comprises each of its components.
For my model, the product page lists:
Hard anodised aluminium (2024 Aerospace grade aluminium)
10.9 Equivalent Grade Bolt (304 Stainless Steel)
Hard Anodised Aluminium (7055-T77 Aerospace grade aluminium)
Induction hardened tool steel (D2 Grade HRC55)
High tensile brass (HTB1)
Martensitic stainless steel (420C Grade Hardened)
The information is delivered again in a very handy diagram:
Can you tell engineers conceived the Pocket Driver (Image source: www. metmo.co.uk)?
I had to smile when I first went looking for this information because I wasn’t expecting to find such depth, and this technical detail implies that each and every one of these materials was selected for a reason. I can imagine some in-depth cost-benefit discussions going on during the Pocket Driver’s design phase!
Are the selected materials “the best” for this type of tool? Probably not, but what is “the best” anyways?
I’m not basing my evaluation on what materials are “best”, because again that will be highly subjective and contingent on tradeoffs between several factors.
For the Pocket Driver, I’m sure you could find lighter and/or stronger, but then we wouldn’t be close to the same cost ballpark, and I give high marks to MetMo here for the care in material selection as much as the materials themselves.
I’m also tipping my hat to MetMo in this evaluation category for really putting their engineering ethos on full display, the only thing that would be neat to see in future products is a brief description for each material laying out why it was chosen over other potential options.
Functionality
I saved up a little backlog of tasks to perform with the Pocket Driver, which included:
Putting up two smoke detectors
Placing the legs onto a newly acquired television
Taking out and placing pedestals on a set of diecast cars I bought to display in my home office.
The first task was particularly difficult because of the height at which I was working. I really wish that it were possible to swing the driver arm open a full 180 degrees and then lock it; this would have given me the opportunity to handle the Pocket Driver like I normally would a screwdriver, and really get my weight behind the screw to get it started before transitioning to ratchet mode.
I understand that this isn’t possible at the moment because of how the Pocket Driver is designed, and because I could not lock the Pocket Driver, the experience was a little bit awkward. Furthermore, once I could start ratcheting, I started getting a pain in my hands and wrists.
For this very specific application, my power drill probably would have been a better choice, and in fact the ratcheting action of the Pocket Driver, while very helpful overall, does take some getting used to.
However, putting the legs onto the television was an absolute breeze: I started the screw with the Pocket Driver closed, then finished off quickly with the handle at 90 degrees with ratchet-mode engaged.
The ratcheting engagement is really nicely managed. You are provided with a little lever that can either fully lock the ratchet (with the lever placed facing outward from the Pocket Driver), or engage the ratchet to screw and unscrew. The designers clearly put some thought into this part, because in accordance with the English language maxim of “righty tighty lefty loosey”, you tip the lever to the right to screw in, and tip it to the left for screw removal.
The model cars were also quickly managed, but that task exposed one obvious area for design improvement.
Indeed, overall I was happy to use the Pocket Driver, but my time with the Pocket Driver left me yearning for three improvements.
First, some driver arm locking choices would be desirable. With the Pocket Driver’s driver arm unstowed, you have to worry about turning the tool as well as maintaining the handle in place. Even the Victorinox can opener/screwdriver functionality allows you a partial lock at 90 degrees.at 180 degrees (though again I understand that just getting the driver arm out this far is not possible at the moment given the Pocket Driver’s design) and definitely at 90 degrees.
Second, I’d love to see MetMo tighten up the ratcheting mechanism just a touch. Again referring back to the watch world, the quality of a dive watch is judged by the action of its bezel, which because of its “clicky” nature serves as a natural comparison to the Pocket Driver’s ratchet mechanism. There are two varieties of dive bezels, 60 click and 120 click, and on the former, when it is well-done, the feeling is superb.
Perhaps the feel of the Pocket Driver was determined for functional reasons - too much resistance makes for a tool that can be hard to use - but if there is the possibility of stiffening it, I recommend that MetMo’s designers check out the bezel actions of the Tudor Black Bay, most watches from Panerai, and (keeping things British) the Vertex M60.AquaLion.
Finally, the diecast cars required me to keep the tool in “stowed” configuration. In-hand, this is a highly satisfying, compact experience because you get to experience the solidity of the tool combined with its satisfying mass.
However, the ratchet lever is almost right up against the driver arm when the tool is in stowed/straight mode, making one-hand actuation impossible; you have either dig your fingernail in between the driver arm and lever, or open the tool somewhat to expose fully the ratchet selector (when the driver arm is open, you can easily operate the ratchet lever one-handed).
Practicality
The tool is definitely able to handle the tasks you’d expect a screwdriver to handle, and then some.
Is that enough for a tool named the “Pocket” Driver?
That word “Pocket” implies that the tool was conceived as a constant companion, as present in your daily activities as your wallet or house keys.
Is the Pocket Driver an EDC (everyday carry) tool?
Though the term EDC seems pretty straightforward, anyone who has even dabbled in EDC knows that what constitutes a loadout is highly subjective. I mean, if you could somehow find out what 100 people carry around everyday, even those who have never even heard of the term “EDC”, you’d probably find they all carried very different items!
My subjective view is that this is not an EDC tool for me; I don’t work in a field that requires a screwdriver constantly, and the limited pocket space I have on me is devoted to my phone on my left side, and my wallet on the right (which occasionally also carries a 58 mm Victorinox Rambler).
However, I move that we create another category of gear called…
Wait for it…
Everyday Handy (EDH).
This category of item would be anything that you may not always need on you, but when you need it, you really, really need it and you’d rather not have to dig through a drawer or toolbox to find what you need to get you unstuck and back to moving through your day.
Again, what constitutes EDH or EDC will depend completely on the person; I could absolutely see a plumber putting this in their work attire and loving it.
For me though, a person who works in front of a computer but occasionally has to hang a picture or assemble a piece of furniture, the Pocket Driver could absolutely be something I consider everyday handy.
Currently, I own a regular screwdriver with a set of replaceable bits. It does the job, but it’s not attractive and I have to go to a tool case I keep hidden whenever I need it. It’s not the most dramatic of hassles, but it’s nevertheless a hassle.
I already own a Leatherman FREE P4 and Victorinox ALOX Farmer X which I don’t carry with me but that sit out in the open, looking beautiful, ready when called on, and I could absolutely see the Pocket Driver joining them.
To me, this is a very good setup with which to accomplish many tasks around the house.
With the Pocket Driver joining that mix, I’m fairly confident I could handle 90% of what I have to manage on a regular basis, and as a bonus, assuming I kept it on my desk I’d have a really fun fidget tool with which to play!
If I did opt for a Pocket Driver in this context, I think I’d also spring for a Magnetic Bit Case to increase the likelihood that I wouldn’t have to end up back in the tool box, fishing for a more suitable bit than the two already stored in the Pocket Driver.
Pricing and overall value
The Pocket Driver ranges from about 120 euros to about 200 euros depending on the material, so there are two questions to answer at this point; first, is the Pocket Driver worth it in an absolute sense, and two, how do you evaluate the different pricing tiers if you’ve decided to take the plunge?
To answer the first question, let’s make this simple and consider that the Pocket Driver costs the average of all three models, or about 160 euros.
My view is at that price, you get a tool that is practical and will likely last a long, long time thanks to its thoughtful construction and material selection. Though I haven’t researched this extensively, my feeling is that, keeping in mind all the inflation of the last few years, a 160 euro price is marginally not much more than inferior, mass market options!
Now we do have to talk in specifics and address the marginal price differences between all three tools. In summary, this will depend on how you intend to use the tool: if plan on relatively light-duty tasks like those I completed, you are probably fine selecting the lowest-cost option, however if you work in the trades and you require the extra material strength and peace of mind that comes from stainless steel, I’d spend the extra 80 euros and over time that difference should comfortably amortized.
Without intending to undercut everything I’ve just written, if I were buying this with my own money, I’d opt for the steel option, not only because I go whenever possible for the most overbuilt option, but also because it would match very nicely with my silver-toned Leatherman and Victorinox tools.
A last point when talking about value is the manufacturer’s warranty, which according to MetMo’s warranty page is 5 years. For this type of tool I would have liked to see at least a partial lifetime warranty, but I understand that this might not seem realistic for a relatively new company like MetMo.
Nevertheless, I think 5 years is ample time to determine how the Pocket Driver will handle your use cases, and because MetMo’s mission is customer-focused I wouldn’t expect you having any issues getting in touch with them should you need to make a warranty claim.
What’s next for MetMo?
I also asked Sean whether MetMo had plans to update the Pocket Driver. His response:
“We don’t have any current plans to make a revised version of the Pocket Driver as we’re currently working on new product lines, but we never say never here at MetMo so there’s always a chance!”
That means that you’ll have to be ok with some of the Pocket Driver’s areas for improvement I mentioned earlier, but then again this is also comforting. With planned obsolescence not in MetMo’s core values, you can be almost completely certain that you won’t buy the Pocket Driver only to find they are releasing a better version shortly after.
As for those new product lines, MetMo is shifting gears to a smaller tool, the Multi Drive, which the company hopes will find a permanent home on your desktop, drafting table or pencil case.
Based on my experience with the Pocket Driver I’m excited to see how this effort goes, and hope that I can make arrangements with MetMo to share a review of the Multi Drive with you as well.
MetMo is now focusing on its latest product launch, the Multi Drive (Image source: MetMo)
Updates:
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