March 2022, I saw one review that warned that this was fake leather, but I saw more reviews that seemed to think it was real, genuine leather. I got the boots in my hands now, it is definitely fake leather. Does fake vs. real leather matter? Maybe fake leather is what you want, or you don't care, but in my experience, fake leather is always priced and valued cheaper than genuine, and for good reason. Fake leather fails a lot sooner than genuine even if the genuine leather is not maintained properly with cleaning, conditioning, and oiling, and when fake leather fails, it gets brittle, cracks, and flakes, meaning it does not age well, it just falls apart. On top of that fake leather does not breathe as well, so feet will get hotter and sweatier, that moisture has a harder time escaping, and feet get stinkier too. I don't know how this boot "leather" will handle down the line, and I have no issues taking chances...if it was labeled clearly. I thought these boots were priced very well for real leather, but now I know it is priced ok, maybe a little high, for fake leather. I definitely would not have bought this at the listed price had I known it was fake leather. Less important to me, but it might be for others, pleather doesn't break in (a comfort and fit issue) or age visually (cosmetic/appearance) anywhere near as much as real leather. It doesn't take a shoe polish shine, and these boots have a dull/matte red-brown that fit closer to rubber athletic shoes than boots. How do I tell this is fake leather? -The "grain" is too regular on the outside. -It doesn't smell like real leather. -The "rawhide" inside side has the regular pattern of a fabric matrix that the plastic of pleather is built on. -When I rub the pleather hard with fingertips, there is no change in the pleather. Real leather will show some marring. To be sure I even gently rubbed my fingernail, still no response. This might sound good, scratch-resistant leather, but again, pleather will fail sooner than real leather, and when it starts to, it goes a lot faster too. But here's my real problem with this item: this mislabeling seems intentional by AdTec. True, the Amazon listing or box don't say "genuine leather" anywhere, but they do say "leather" in all those places. Even more, the side of the boot is stamped "water resistant oil tanned leather". Well, I don't know what definition of tanned AdTec was using, but from what little I know, there's no way to tan pleather. I mean, I guess they colored it a dark tan? And, like that one other reviewer noted (and posted the photo), the label in the boot says "upper and balance man made materials". At least that part, the part that's supposed to be accurate (there's probably a law in the US), is accurate. Why that same label prints "genuine leather" on a separate line, I don't know. Intentional mislabeling? Even if there was genuine leather on this boot, the best I can guess is it would be the tongue, maybe some kind of suede. Hint: the tongue is one of the least important parts of a boot to have genuine leather, and it is a functionally small part, so less material, cheaper to make real leather. By the way, this would have been my 2nd AdTec boot purchase. I took a chance on their Industrial Work Boot (different model) last month, found it to be a good deal *and* a nice looking real leather and a good looking boot too ("tumbled" leather, which is a form of processing/correction that removes some of the outer material and technically makes it thinner and maybe weaker, but still better than pleather of the same thickness). I waited too long to decide on a 2nd pair though, and price went up (I don't hold the price change against AdTec or Amazon).
