Collecting every piece of gear takes a little time.
We think it's worth the wait.

Nice choice!
Give us a moment to collect those options for you.

heavy

5.16

Great for Leftists

Pros
true one handed auto-locker
large for great rope handling
simple safety check
Cons
heavy

This biner is great for those of all political affiliations, but amazing for Left-handers! As a left handed belayer I am able to operate (lock and unlock) easily with either hand using the "push in and twist" instead of the "down and twist" of most autolockers. I've used this as my main belay biner for years and it still auto-locks smoothly. The "green for go" ball is also a good visual check of system safety.

OvalWire

Black Diamond
Black Diamond OvalWire
3.48

Don't trust it to hold your nuts

Pros
oval
Cons
heavy
doesn't carry nuts well...

You cannot use the BD wire gate oval that comes with their nut set to hold your nuts. You need a solid gate oval. I was told this by my climbing mentor once before I led a climb (with my new nuts and accompanying wire gate biner). I thought “ok, sure, I'll think about it” . During the climb I experienced the reason why a wire gate is not a good idea here. When testing the nut, giving it a good tug with the biner/rest of the nuts, the placed nut somehow came off the wire gate biner. What?! That week I purchased a solid gate oval and have never had this issue again. I wish BD would sell their nuts with the solid gate instead.


Occasionally I use this wire gate for my glacier travels for my rescue system instead (with pully/prussik/knife). But my Omega Pacific oval is a bit smaller/lighter and does the job just as well (it has a smaller gate opening, but with such infrequent use it's not an issue at all).

3.48

Why settle for this fatty?

Cons
heavy
low squeeky lock action
fat

I just realized the BD Positron and Petzl Spirit are actually rated stronger than this fatty (diameter) locker, weird! I don't use Fatty McFatFat much as he seems to take up a lot of area on my harness for being a locker with a fairly small gate opening. The gate action is slow, lots and lots of spins to get it locked. There's a lot of lockers that have better benefits out there.

Attache

Petzl
Petzl Attache Full View
0.9

I tried to return this biner, and have gotten rid of it since.

Pros
full-size
red-line warning
Cons
heavy
terrible lock action

When slightly tightened, this biner is worse than a maple syrup bottle to open. When I attempted to return it due to the “forever in lock-mode” feature, the store said that that's just "the way the biner is" and that they had actually had a few other people complain about the “forever in lock-mode” feature as well (I had two, and they both performed the same).

The lock action is incredibly fast; spin the gate once and it can be locked, or opened. Because the gate action is so easy and can move so freely, it's easy to "over-tighten" (I use this term loosely) to make sure it doesn't accidentally spin open. Though I can assure you I tried many different combinations of tightening, I never found one I could trust.

Note: I had this problem if the biner had become loaded in any way, and it seemed to act up more in cold weather.