Black Diamond Oval Wire Review |
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Overall avg rating 3.8 of 5 based on 7 reviews. Most recent review: July 9, 2011
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Street Price:
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Pros: Rope runs smoothly, good for top rope anchors, can use for carabiner break rappel
Cons: Heavy, bulky, gate gets hung up
Best Uses: Top rope anchors, just nice to have a couple around
Recommendations: 100% of reviewers (4/4) recommend this product
Manufacturer:
Black Diamond
| Review by: Chris McNamara ⋅ Founder and Editor-in-Chief, OutdoorGearLab ⋅ May 23, 2010 |
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Overview
The Oval Wire is the wire gate version of the classic Black Diamond Oval. It is a little lighter than the oval and stronger. It is great for racking gear because so much gear fits on it.
The oval shape reduces carabiner shift and allows the rope to run smoothly. However, there are only a few applications where they excel over other biners. There are many new, small, and lightweight biners that get the job done and greatly lower the weight and bulk of the rack. The Omega Pacific Doval is the main competitor to the Oval Wire. It is lighter but also much smaller and more expensive. If you are looking for a big comfy oval, we would go with the Oval Wire because of its price. However, for most applications we would lean toward a lightweight wire gate biner like the Black Diamond Oz or Wild Country Astro.
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OutdoorGearLab Editors' Hands-on Review
Likes
The Oval Wire scores high for smoothness; when you run a rope though it there is less friction than with almost any other non-locking carabiner. This makes it excel for top rope anchors where two of them are used "opposite and opposed." They are also great if you are setting up a carabiner break rappel (however, that type of rappel is used less and less considering there are ways to get yourself down if you drop your belay device). Ovals are good for racking slings and pitons because the gear can slide around easily. Some aid climbers like them for their aiders and daisy chains because they don't cause "biner shift." That said, we have never found biner shift to be a big issue.
Dislikes
Ovals in general are heavy and bulky. While this one is lighter than a standard oval, it is still pretty heavy; 30 to 60 percent heavier than most wire gate biners. If you have a big trad rack or big wall rack, that weight adds up fast. While these are good for racking pitons and slings, with no key lock or recessed notch, nuts get hung up, especially if there are a lot of nuts.
Best Application
Ovals are great for top roping or any situation where smooth rope pull is needed. It's not a bad idea to buy four to six of them when you first start climbing because they are cheap and you can learn the old school "carabiner break rappel."
Value
This is one of the cheaper carabiners and only 50 cents more expensive than a standard oval. That said, considering their limited applications, we would rather buy a cheaper wire gate biner if we were on a tight budget.
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Chris McNamara
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OutdoorGearLab Member Reviews
Most recent review: July 9, 2011
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WML · Climber · Biggest Little City, NV
Bomber and awesome, light and a big zone to clip into. Need I say more?
Bottom Line: Yes, I would recommend this product to a friend.
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I love mine. They stay tame on my rack, and are great for a variety of uses.
Bottom Line: Yes, I would recommend this product to a friend.
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Not really for your primary biner, but a handful of these for racking nuts, small cams, pins, heads, and so on really keeps the rack tamed.
Bottom Line: Yes, I would recommend this product to a friend.
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I have this biner for both ends of most of my trad draws for about 3 years now.
Pros:
1. This thing is rad to clip. It has a BUNCH of space since it has more of that oval shape. When you are clipping rope into it when leading, it had a ton of space for both the rope and your thumb when clipping through the gate because of that oval shape. If you have big fingers, you should check this out. Gate openings are important, but so is how big the basket is, and this oval is one of the biggest baskets, if not the biggest.
2. For rope-holding capacity, the "opening" end is large, much larger than a D shape; and at the opposite end ("closed") it holds more rope/webbing if you are using it at an anchor and have it hanging from several strands of a cordelette or multiple equalized slings.
3. Great all around biner for clipping ropes, clipping through chain links, etc. I really like this biner in general.
4. I really like this biner for clipping opposite and opposed. These give you way more room on both ends of the biner than an asymmetrical D set up… even more than a large HMS biner for a power-point. I have not run into the "pushing open the other biners gate" issue like other people, at least not to the extent that they say it happens. I've seen it happen on occasion, but it's not a super common occurance. I think this is because these aren't true ovals and are indeed offset slightly, so usually the gates aren't sitting right on the spine of the other biner. When the loads are just right and the biners aren't offset is when you see the gate-opening issue, which isnt that often.
Cons:
1. This is on the heavier side.
2. It flips easily on trad draws, so it can be harder to identify the side to clip than D's.
3. I find that it's easy for this biner to rotate while hanging on my harness, and in so doing, wired nuts can unclip themselves fairly easily. I rack on solid gates.
Bottom Line: Yes, I would recommend this product to a friend.
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Used 'em for racking for years with no complaints.
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I think with the wide variety of potential uses, this is a good biner for some things (as noted).
I was hoping this biner would work better for racking pins and nuts. I believe wiregates are more prone to having racked gear come off them in confined situations like squeezes, flares and with big racks. Additionally, I think the gate on this biner has a particularly soft spring, which exacerbates that.
I don't like the performance of a wiregate used at a PPT reversed and opposed with another biner. The gate can be forced open under load--by design of the wiregate, not necessarily specific to this biner.
The O-Wire feels really great in hand, but for me did not perform as I'd hoped for the detail I had in mind. I prefer non-wire ovals and keylock Ds (and sometimes wiregate Ds) for racking pins and nuts.
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 Black Diamond Ovalwire Credit: BlackDiamondEquipment.com
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