Peak Design Form Rope Strap review – ludicrously expensive, massively over-engineered, and ridiculously good

Amateur Photographer verdict

This minimalist rope strap is, like all Peak Design’s products, expensive compared to similar-looking alternatives. But it’s extremely well made from high quality materials and works brilliantly.

Pros

Beautifully constructed from quality materials
Versatile design
Comprehensive box contents
Versatile mounting and use options

Cons

Peak Design, so pricey

The Peak Design Form Rope strap is a minimalist camera strap that’s designed for relatively small and lightweight cameras. It comes in a choice of three lengths and three colours, and attaches to cameras using the firm’s familiar anchor links. It costs $49.95 / £44.99, and a leather version is also available for $79.95 / £69.99.

Peak Design Form Rope strap at a glance:

$49.95 / £44.99
Cross-body rope camera strap
Choice of three lengths: 103.5, 108.5, or 134 cm
Available in Black, Kelp (green), or Ocean (blue)
Neck and wrist straps also available
peakdesign.com

While Peak Design is now well established as a maker of premium accessories, it first made its name producing camera straps. These have since become extremely popular and much imitated, with the firm’s distinctive quick-release Anchor Links adorning many a camera. I must admit I didn’t see the attraction at first, but now I use the firm’s Leash and Slide Lite straps all the time.

While these flat fabric straps are great for relatively large mirrorless or SLR cameras, they’re less well-suited to smaller kit, such as compacts, APS-C or Micro Four Thirds mirrorless, and many film cameras. But Peak Design has spotted the popularity of simple rope or leather straps for these types of cameras, and decided to make its own, using its same anchor links.

Peak Design Form Rope strap in Kelp. Image credit: Andy Westlake — Colour-matched connectors are seamlessly moulded onto the rope itself. Image credit: Andy Westlake

The result is the Peak Design Form range, which comprises cross-body straps in three lengths, a neckstrap, and a wriststrap. All are available in either rope or leather, and in a variety of colours. I tried out the Standard cross-body rope strap in Kelp (green), which is 118.5cm long. It also comes in Black or Ocean (blue), and Short (103.5cm) or Long (134cm) lengths.

Peak Design Form Rope strap key features:

Anchor Links: The strap attaches to your camera using Peak Design’s familiar anchor links, with four supplied in the box that are colour-coordinated to the strap
Split rings: A pair of particularly small and neat oval split rings are supplied, complete with a special tool to fit them. They’re too small to work properly with the strap lugs on some cameras, though
Anchor mount: You can attach one or both ends of the strap to a mount that screws into your camera’s tripod socket
Loop strap: By attaching one anchor link to a sliding metal lug on the rope, you can turn the strap into an adjustable loop

Peak Design Form Rope strap accessories. — The kit includes spare Anchor Links; a tripod socket connector with a hex key for fixing it to the camera; and a pair of small, neat split rings with a plastic attachment tool. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Firstly, I have to say that $49.95 / £44.99 is ridiculously pricey for a rope strap – you can get a basic one for a quarter of the price. But this is Peak Design, a company that has no idea how to make anything without massively over-engineering it. The result is colour-coordinated connector clips that are seamlessly and elegantly moulded onto the rope itself, with the overall construction rated for a frankly ridiculous 82kg of force. No matter how hard I pull, there’s no hint it might come apart.

Peak Design Form Rope strap in cross-body mode. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Peak Design Form Rope strap in loop mode. Image credit: Andy Westlake

It’s not just a simple strap either, with Peak Design offering several ways of attaching it to your camera. You can fit it conventionally to both strap lugs, of course, but you also get a mount for fixing one or both ends to your camera’s tripod socket. Or if you like, you can turn the strap into a loop and attach it to your device at one point only. That could be good for carrying a small compact camera or your smartphone.

Peak Design Form Rope strap converted to a loop. — The strap can be converted to a loop and fixed to a camera’s tripod socket. Image credit: Andy Westlake

As well as the cross-body strap reviewed here, Peak Design is offering a 78.5cm-long neck strap for $44.95 / £39.99. The main difference design-wise is that it doesn’t have the lug to turn it into a loop. There’s also a simple loop-style wrist strap for $39.95 / £34.99.

Peak Design Form wriststrap in Black Leather, attached to the Fujifilm X100VI. Image credit: Andy Westlake

All these straps are also available in leather versions, in a choice of Black, Tan or Amber, but at higher prices. I also have the leather wriststrap for review, and again it’s beautifully made and works really nicely. But ironically, it’s so slickly designed and made that it loses any hint of the artisan charm that’s a big attraction of hand-made leather straps.

Our Verdict

I’ve used the Peak design Form Rope cross-body strap to carry various relatively small cameras, including the Leica M EV1 with 35mm f/1.4 lens, the Fujifilm X100VI, and the OM System OM-3 with 12-45mm f/4 zoom. In typical Peak Design fashion, it’s really well designed and made. The rope is soft and flexible, with a nice degree of stretchiness that makes your camera feel lighter. So yes, it’s ridiculously pricey – but it’s also ridiculously good.