Review: Black Diamond Magnetron

For the past couple of months Vertical Life has been out and about using Black Diamond’s shiny new RockLock Magnetron locking ‘biner (the only one in the country no less). The Magnetron is BD’s purported paradigm-busting piece of kit that does away with screw and twist-locking mechanisms in favour of magnets as a way of securing the gate of the ‘biner shut. It’s touted as removing the need to make things complicated to make them secure.

Wherever we have pulled the Magnetron out, be it at The Arapiles, in The Blueys, at The gym or around a campfire in The Gramps, people’s reactions have always followed the same trajectory: fascination makes way for wariness, which quickly builds into an attempt to identify potential points of failure, which is rendered into a brief – often heated – quasi-scientific discussion that tapers into stoney acceptance accompanied by covetous glances a la Smeagol.