Profile

I have pretty small (girl) hands. I still think the gate opening on this biner is too small (and rather stiff). Only one finger can fit comfortably on the gate (two fingers = one gets smushed when you go to close the gate). I've heard a few people claim “you get used to it” but I'm not hardcore enough to keep trying something that doesn't work for me. I have two of these biners and they rarely accompany me on a trip. For a small biner, I'd rather have 4-7 more grams and a pleasant experience. It works like it should, but that just doesn't work for me. Note: I know CAMP has slightly improved the Nano 23 since it's first release, which is the model I have. I haven't tried any of the newer ones.

In my opinion you cannot use the BD wire gate oval that comes with their nut set to hold your nuts. You need a solid gate (oval) biner. I was told this by a 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” at first. And then during the climb I experienced the reason why a wire gate biner 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 free off the biner. What?! That week I purchased this solid gate oval and have never had this issue again. The gate action is also smooth and a great resistance. If somebody stole this biner, I would buy it again. I wish BD would sell their nuts with this solid gate instead.


I'm too lazy to take all my nuts off this biner to use it for my glacier travels, so I use the oval wire gate biner that came with the nuts for my rescue system instead (with pullys/prussiks). Because ovals really do work a ton better for a pully system.

I have two sets of the 6-pack Neutrinos. I bought them because they were some of the first biners I saw to come color-coded--and the anodized colors perfectly matched my BD cams.

My biggest grief is that the non-keylock nose sticks fairly often. It's pretty annoying but not enough for me to give them up and buy different racking biners (just enough that I wouldn't recommend them to others).

They're also a little heavy for such a tiny gate-opening. The gate action is fairly stiff but not discouraging. I tried a few as alpine draws but that provided a disappointing experience too; the Neutrino specialty is definitely cheap-color-coded racking.

They're pretty thin, which is a plus for racking. Though if I were to buy racking biners today, I would buy a different model (willing to spend $1-2 more per 'biner to increase the handling), since there are so many more options now.

I use these biners (w/ a locker) for my cordelette. For me they (along with all the other super lightweight biners) have too small of a gate opening for me to easily rack with them (practice makes perfect?...). Either way, I like having this biner around. I've used them on draws before and they worked, but I haven't done it since--they're just not as awesome as the WC Nitros (or Heliums), but those full-size biners aren't really a fair comparison. Compared to other micro-biners I like this one the most.