Soho Urban Artist Pochade Box for Plein - Aire Painting French Easel, Lightweight, Portable & Adjustable, Mahogany Finish

This needs a slight alteration. I added outer heavy silicone washers between the wood pieces and hinge in front, between the hinge and body. This corrects the slip of the lid when painting. Also superglued two steel (from a candy tin) plates on the outside and carved out space in the brush tray to hold two small magnets to attach to the plates. Now the brush tray doesn’t fall off when walking. For the box, I love it! For a Pochade of this size it is quite light. My French easel is 12lbs empty, a real lug with 5oz tubes. This one won’t hold as much but for painting small it is great. Like all Pochades, it is delicate. Don’t expect a tank for this sort of precision. It will need a sturdy heavy duty camera tripod, like my Leica,. A tall one helps with hills. This box has a nice finish, good hardware and a very clever arrangement. The puzzling extra pieces turned out to be adaptors to get the smallest panels (5x7 & 8x10) to fit I the slot underneath. This also needed alteration. They mentioned it would hold 6 under there. It does not look like there is room for 6, 9x12”s. But they will be dry. For wet panels, choose or make a wet carrying case. The 9x12 will not ride home ok on the easel without falling into the pallet. Don’t carry a wet painting inside. The 2” tall cubby ware fits in the interior lying sideways. I fill them with oils and load a full pallet. Great with 37mil tubes or smaller. Happy painting!

I do like this box. I purchased this box to use at home, primarily for its mobility. I can sit it on my lap, or the tripod. It’s well thought out in its design. Some complain because it doesn’t tighten well. Yes it takes some strength to tighten it so that your canvas stays in place. Once it’s tight it’s great. It’s lightweight for easy travel, yet well built for the artist who wants to have all your tools readily available at your fingertips. I do have a large easel, but it’s not mobile enough. This works great. The max height allowable is a 17” canvas board. Rightly so as it’s not designed for the heavy large canvases. It can hold quite a few 9x12 or less canvas birds in its stowaway compartment. Long handle brushes fit in it. I prefer glass pallets, so I purchased a 9x12 New Wave pallet, which fits on top of the wooden pull-out pallet. I plan on adhering the glass pallet to it for a more stable ride. It’s a well designed, good looking, versatile unit.

So the engineering. What you're getting here is the whole package , easel attachment / pochade box and canvas holder. I included a picture of a pile of wood I disrespected trying.to make one of these myself because "its only a box" , ha. My only two design critiques would be that Id rather have the tripod mount adjustable or center instead of back and I wish less wood blocked the pallet area (but its actually better in that regard than many others) The attaching brush panel? Flush with the box. Also attached magnetically into its cubby (you can see the tiny circular magnet on one photo I took) Wngineering wise the highlight has to be the pochade box that can adjust to accept so many sizes. The value? Just unbeatable. If you're looking to get into plein air , stop right now . You found it. I easily spent twice as much on parts just attempting to bud my own. Sturdiness I gave 3 stars because I can tell some kind of soft wood or artificial wood was just dolled up to look nice (not that they lie by the way) , of course weight is a huge factor so without doing aluminum trades have to be made. I do feel just holding and handling it that although they didnt build it or design it cheaply , if it were to drop or scrape against something it would get damaged. Its...6 pounds I think? Well within reason when you consider its a portable studio. I guess a final "wish list" critique for soho on how to improve might be to allow us to separate the supply storage and canvas storage area from the easel / palette holding area , maybe the next iteration could be aluminum in order to facilitate that? But yeh. I spent over a month looking at every pochade / easel box on the market , agonizing over mt choices and even trying to build one and.this sleak beauty was right under my.nose the whole time , check all the boxes.

This does appear to be a well made item, better build quality than I would expect for the price. However, it came without the D-ring attachments for the shoulder strap. I am not going to burn up a bunch of fossil fuels returning it, I am handy enough to solve this problem. There was also some schmutz on the handle, I think it will come off with some work. Also, it arrived with no instructions. There are parts and bits that I think are used to adapt the canvas holder to different sizes, but I can’t for the life of me figure them out. The mixing pallet/tray is beige not white, and it is made of thin plywood or particle board with a paper thin veneer on it. I doubt this will hold up to much paint mixing. Not a huge deal since I have a pallet that fit perfectly in it, but white plastic might have been a better choice here.

This box has it all! I LOVE it! One of the best parts versus others like these is that it will hold small canvases in place. Others only hold bigger sizes and will not adjust to hold 5x7 etc. I don’t write many reviews so trust me when I say this is worth every penny. Great price and just a great product all around for any level artist. I suggest watching the video for it. It shows all the hidden gems.

I love how easy this is to carry around and holds 90% of what I need. The rest Is carried I a small bag twice a week for oil painting class at college. Son of the cons are that the side doors open at times. But truly only when I’ve placed it in a weird position. The magnetic piece for the brush holder doesn’t stay on too well. So I mostly go without it. Overall, I’ve very pleased and think those small improvements would really make this a perfect painting tool holder.

Fantastic surprise when it arrived two weeks earlier than the date it was scheduled to arrive. Functional and solid Pochade with everything as advertised. It’s not a master carpenters construction but then it wasn’t £600.00+ so you can’t expect that. Great to use indoors too if space is tight. Highly recommend *****