My genuine leather belts and wallets starts flaking after 3 years, so less durable than the 5 years synthetic leather. Nowadays i only go full or topgrain.There are tricks to preserving pleather too like keeping your humidity in check and spraying it with protectant every month. This isn’t ideal ofcourse. But as you said the pleather+leather is worse and peels too. Looks stiff and thick, hard to tailor properly.
The Damtoys jacket from the gangster kingdom spades figure that I used for my custom Leon looks exactly like a leather jacket. But it’s not pleather. Just like a rough textured cotton or something. Wish they’d just use that instead of pleather for all figures.
And yes i always apply some coating on pleather. Tried tire shine, beewax, mink oil and now meguire hyper dressing (similar to 303 but cheaper). Tire shine gives the thickest gloss coat. Minkoil is the messiest and almost never dries and leaves residue on your hands. Beewax cream dries thin. Hyper dressing doesnt stain after dry and you can control the gloss by adding more water into the mix.
But key is environment humidity and temperature and the material itself. Those pleather trench coats from dragon decade ago still good but they are thicker.
Also most failure starts from underneath so unless you can coat both sides the application only helps maintain the good look of the surface.