You mean just having the pliers part hidden until deployed? If that's the case, the Gerber does just fine in that regard. The tip of the pliers only comes out about 3mm from the end of the handle. One advantage that definitely goes to the Leatherman over the Gerber is the ability to deploy the tools without having to deploy the pliers. With the Gerber, you have to push the pliers out first, whereas you can simply rotate out the tools with the Leatherman. Of course, in my experience, it's the pliers that get used more often than the other tools on the multi so that's not that big of a concern to me.