Natural Earth
A compromise: a little area distortion and a little shape distortion, neither severe. It promises to conserve nothing, which is what a compromise is.
What a compromise means
It promises to conserve nothing. Area distorts 3.5 times at 84 north and shape 9.2 times: neither is good, neither is a disaster. Mercator's area figure at the same latitude is 91.5, and Gall-Peters' shape figure is 45.8.
That is the case for compromise projections. If you are not going to measure area off the map and not going to navigate by it, keeping both distortions mild is usually more useful than driving one to zero and letting the other run.
One implementation note
Natural Earth squeezes low latitudes to fit its canvas: its area scale at the equator is only 0.877 of its nominal scale. The readings here are normalised against each projection's own measured equator, so this page shows 1.00x rather than 0.88x. Without that, "compared with the equator" would be false for this one projection.