Mad Rock UltraLight Quickdraw Review

Likes
This quickdraw does a great job of balancing price, weight, and functionality. It is not the lightest quickdraw, but it is pretty darn light. It is not the most functional, but it gets the job done. In our test, it scored well but not in a stand out way. Rope ran fairly smooth through it and it was just big enough to clip 3 figure eights and still open gate.

It is a nice size; not too small - not too big. Usable with gloves unlike smaller biners. The easy to grip spine was nice but not remarkable.

What did stand out about this Mad Rock carabiner is that it comes with a bent gate for easier clipping on quick draws. Few other light quickdraws have a bent gate version. That said, how much a bent gate helps you clip is just one factor in ease of clipping (gate spring tension and easy of gripping the biner are just as important).

Dislikes
As with all biners with the wire-gate design the notch gets caught up on the bolt hanger when cleaning steep routes. Other than that, the only dislikes are very minor and comparison to the competition. For example the spine not quite as easy to grip as Astro but at the same time it is barely noticable.

The rubber gasket used on this quickdraw is not very durable. This is the little piece of black rubber for the bottom (bent) carabiner to keep it in place for clipping. We found they broke after a few months of heavy use. Not a big deal because the quickdraw still works without the rubber part. But by comparison, the Petzl Spirit Express uses a much beefier rubber piece that takes much longer to break. Also, the sling or "dogbone" used to connect the carabiner is pretty skinny. This shaves weight but makes it hard to comfortably grab the draw.

Best Application
If you are using these quickdraws mainly for trad climbing or alpine climbing, keep the sling that the quickdraw comes with. If you are using these mainly for sport climbing, I would swap out the dogbone on these for the Petzl Express Sling (the 17mm size is the best). They cost 4-6$ but if you get the biners themselves on sale separately, you can still compose the quickdraw for a good value.