PETZL NEOX Review 2024

So, I have now been using the PETZL NEOX for a couple of months and using it exclusively for all my indoor and outdoor lead belaying. I have been impressed at the handling capacity, it’s not going to work so well with your furry old, fat 10.5 climbing gym rope but for modern, thinner ropes it has been excellent. I use an 9.1mm rope for outdoor and a 10mm for indoors and they have both been fine (it is rated for rope diameters between 8.5 and 11mm). I feel that the NEOX may not a replacement for the GRIGRI and you should look to invest with the following in mind: if you climb long sports climbs of 30m+ and mostly lead climbs then the NEOX is perfect; if you do a lot of top roping, roped soloing and jugging/rigging style activities then the GRIGRI could be a better fit for you. For multi-pitch bolted routes and trad climbing then I’ll be sticking with my belay plate as I usually use double ropes on multi pitch because of the abbing. But… it would work perfectly fine for trad climbing with a single rope – which is the way many modern, hard trad routes are climbed.