Ultimate Guard Katana Precision-Fit Inner Sleeves Review

We have high hopes for the Katana Precision-Fit inner sleeves purely based on their name and association with their outer sleeve counterpart. But, with Ultimate Guard’s shaky history when it comes to the inner sleeve, can the Katana Precision-Fits live up to our lofty expectations? 

The Katana Precision-Fits are Ultimate Guard’s premium inner sleeve offering - not to be confused with the Katana outer sleeves or Ultimate Guard’s non-Katana Precise-Fit sleeves.

The Katana inners measure 64mm x 89mm meaning they are suitable as a Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon sleeve but not suitable for Yu-Gi-Oh cards which are slightly smaller. As expected, the Katana inner sleeves are completely acid and PVC free, as well as 40 microns thick on each side - all pretty normal for an inner sleeve.

The Katana Precision Fits have a relatively loose fit around the card compared to most inner sleeves. We would describe the fit as similar to the Dragon Shield Perfect Fits which are a fan favourite.

The seam strength of an inner sleeve is important as we don’t want the sleeve to split during the sleeving process - trust us, we’ve had it happen more times than we care to count! 

To test the seams, we do a simple stretch test where we use 2 fingers to pull and see how much effort is required to rip the sleeve. Our scores here are fairly lenient due to the super-thin nature of inner sleeves and the main thing we’re looking for is enough resistance to signal it will do its job adequately. 

With that in mind, the Katanas are shockingly resilient to splitting. Some will split when pulling them apart with full strength and some simply warp and refuse to tear at all. This is extremely impressive for an inner sleeve, tougher than many outer sleeves, and stronger than we thought possible. A perfect 10/10 for seam strength.

The Katana inner sleeves fit around the card snugly without applying too much pressure.

To see just how well the Katana Precision-Fits double-sleeve, we sleeved up 100 cards in them and proceeded to combine them with 13 different outer sleeves totalling 1300 sleeves and un-sleeves.

We classify each sleeving attempt as a good fit or a bad fit. A good fit is where the inner sleeve slots nicely into the outer sleeve with no issues. A bad fit is where the card slips out of the inner sleeve whilst being inserted into the outer sleeve, normally caused by an overly loose inner sleeve or an overly tight outer sleeve. Keep in mind, we are talking about millimetres, or less, in manufacturing inconsistencies which can cause such issues.

After all the sleeving is done, we tally up the bad fits for a total of 36/1300, with the main issues being with the Ultra Pro outers. This puts the Katana inner sleeves ahead of almost all others for compatibility and ease of double-sleeving. Seriously impressive, and a near perfect 9/10 for double-sleeving.

To see a full breakdown of our sleeving results, please visit our Ultimate Double Sleeving Guide.  

For clarity, we half insert foil cards into the sleeve to see if there is any dulling of the shine or colours. As we can see below, the Katana Precision-Fits are perfectly clear and have no issues with displaying cards in all of their glory. A flawless 10/10 for clarity.

The Katana Precision-Fits are super clear and display foils well.

Next up, we have our dreaded water test where we sleeve up some cards in the Katana inner sleeves and a variety of different outer sleeves, all doomed to the same fate of being submerged in water for 10 seconds.

No, we don’t just want to watch the world burn but to see how good the Katanas are at keeping your cards dry in the event of a spilt drink during a game. After all, if they can survive this, they can survive whatever your local game store has to throw at them!

After removing the cards from the water, we carefully pat them dry and un-sleeve for the moment of truth. We look closely, paying extra attention to the 2 bottom corners which are the most exposed, and see that they have been kept nice and dry. This was the same for any outer sleeve paired with the Katana inners meaning a solid pass in the water test.

The RRP of the Katana Precision-Fit inner sleeves is £5.79 for a pack of 100. We sell them slightly lower at £5.49 per pack here. This puts the Katana inner sleeves as the most expensive regular inner sleeve on the market and even more expensive than some sealable inner sleeves. 

As always, prices do change over time and across stores so please do your own research for current prices.