REASONS TO BUY
Easy clipping and unclipping
Keylock design
Lightweight for medium size biner
REASONS TO AVOID
Bent spine sacrifices strength
CAMP USA Dyon Review
The Dyon is an excellent carabiner that we found effective in a wide variety of climbing applications
Credit: Backcountry
RELATED: Best Carabiner of 2023
Our Verdict
The Camp Dyon is an excellent and versatile wire gate carabiner offering a balance between ultralight tiny biners and the jumbo trad dad biners from the 90s. The Dyon is both lightweight and offers fantastic ease of clipping for those high-stress clips when fiddling around could land you in a world of pain. The smooth nose offered excellent clipping and unclipping earning top marks in both category. It was a tall order to find any cons with the Dyon and feel it is worthy of any climbing mission.
Compare to Similar Products
 This Product
CAMP USA Dyon | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awards |  |  |  | | |
| Price | $13.95 at Amazon Compare at 2 sellers | $8.00 List $7.95 at REI | $13.95 at Backcountry Compare at 2 sellers | $8.00 List $7.95 at REI | $7.00 List $6.95 at REI |
Overall Score  |
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| Star Rating | |||||
| Pros | Easy clipping and unclipping, keylock design, lightweight for medium size biner | Full-sized, easy to clip, low price, low weight | Key-locking nose design, easy gate action, large size | Great price, slim profile, comes in eight different colors | Very light, inexpensive, small shape |
| Cons | Bent spine sacrifices strength | Has a notch in the nose, gates sometimes get sticky over time | Pricey, heavy compared to competition | Other options are lighter, a little on the small side, exposed notch in the gate | Not the easiest to clip, exposed notch on nose, can be hard to handle with gloves on |
| Bottom Line | The Dyon is an excellent carabiner that we found effective in a wide variety of climbing applications | While not perfect, still the most impressive combination of the winning attributes – full size, low weight, low price | This great carabiner is among the largest and hands down the easiest to use, regardless of hand size | This inexpensive carabiner provides a great value and matches up well with your cams | A tiny and lightweight carabiner that will help you shave ounces from your rack, but may also be a bit harder to use |
| Rating Categories | CAMP USA Dyon | CAMP Photon Wire | Wild Country Helium 3 | Trango Phase Carabiner | Black Diamond MiniWire |
| Clipping (25%) | |||||
| Unclipping (20%) | |||||
| Weight (20%) | |||||
| Gate Clearance (20%) | |||||
| Handling (15%) | |||||
| Specs | CAMP USA Dyon | CAMP Photon Wire | Wild Country Helium 3 | Trango Phase Carabiner | Black Diamond MiniWire |
| Manufacturer Weight (g) | 33g | 30g | 38g | 30g | 23g |
| Gate Closed (kN) | 21 | 22 | 24 | 24 | 20 |
| Sideways (kN) | 7 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| Gate Open (kN) | 11 | 9 | 10 | 7 | 7 |
| Gate Clearance (mm) | 26 | 26 | 27 | 23 | 21 |
| Forging Method | Not Specified | Cold | Hot | Not Specified | Hot |
Show full specification detailsHide full specification details
Our Analysis and Test Results
The Camp Dyon is an ergonomic, lightweight, and easy to handle carabiner. We especially appreciated the narrow profile of the keylock nose for its quick and efficient clipping and unclipping. Most notably, unclipping and removing the biner from bolts, pins, or fixed wires was snag free which can go a long way towards making your mission run quickly and efficiently.
Performance Comparison
The Camp Dyon is an excellent carabiner. The smooth clipping action was extremely smooth and the ergonomic shape and mid size dished out some above par handling.
Credit: Brian Martin
Clipping
The Dyon was one of the highest scorers in the ease of clipping department. The unique keylock gate is bound with enough tension to keep the biner from cross clipping on your harness but not so much that it feels like it's resisting a rope being clipped through. Just as the wire gate feels balanced and user friendly, the subtle notch formed where the nose and gate meet cradles the rope enough to keep any potential fumbling to a minimum. The concave spine gave the Dyon a unique ergonomic feel when using a pinch clip technique.
While the Dyon has a few downsides, clipping prowess is certainly not one of them. The gate tension and ergonomic shape made for perfect clips consistently.
Credit: Brian Martin
The toothless nose has more advantages than just unclipping performance. We noticed times when putting the draw in as a quickdraw and realizing it needed to be flipped to the opposite direction, removing the carabiner was significantly easier than biners with an exposed tooth. This equated to less fumbling overall and consistently quick clips.
Unclipping
While all of the biners we tested this year were wire gates, the Dyon was the only one to utilize a key-lock closure. The extremely smooth and narrow nose profile made unclipping and cleaning remarkably easy. Even compared to biners with a hood or recessed clip on the nose, the completely smooth keylock worked a treat and slid effortlessly out of bolts and the ever snaggy fixed wires. If you really want to set your follower up for success, the Dyon was one of our top performers in unclipping even in steep, pumpy situations.
The toothless keylock design made for simple unclipping. We didn't have any issues with the Dyon snagging on ropes, wires or slings. The only thing it did snag was our heart. <3
Credit: Brian Martin
Weight
Surprisingly, as the Dyon was nowhere close to the smallest biner tested, it was on the lighter side of the spectrum. At 33 grams, the Dyon, certainly won't weigh down your harness and has so many positive attributes from clipping, unclipping, and overall handling the extra couple grams is worth it. If you're truly on the hunt for the lightest biners you can find, the Dyon is probably not on your radar as it's about 10 grams heavier than the lightest biner we have tested. If you're looking for a buttery smooth biner that doesn't get hung up but still retains a reasonable weight, the Dyon is an excellent choice.
The Dyon hovered around 33-34 grams on our rather cheap Taylor scale. While this certainly isn't an ultralight biner, it didn't feel bulky or heavy in hand. The performance certainly makes up for the relative weight penalty.
Credit: Brian Martin
Gate Clearance
Somehow we were able to slam six loops of 9.8mm rope through the Dyon, which makes it competitive even with some biners that have a larger surface area. While it is highly unlikely to run into a situation where you need to capture so many strands of rope with a biner so focused on sport and trad climbing, we felt that this was certainly adequate.
The Dyon has just enough room to fit 4 9.8mm strands of lead rope before the gate gets clogged up.
Credit: brian martin
Handling
The full-size profile and concave spine give the Dyon excellent handling. Even handling with gloves on wasn't too fiddly though having something that fills your grip with a straight spine or convex spine would certainly handle better with a gloved hand. As it stands, for sport climbing or fair-weather trad climbing the Dyon has excellent handling for both large and small-handed climbers. For clipping into bolts, wire, or pins, our thumb naturally settled on the smooth keylock bead getting the biner in and out quickly and easily without much re-gripping on the way.
Everything from manipulating the biner on our harness, to re-threading our alpine draws was pretty simple with the Dyon. Having a bent spine and larger profile payed dividends in this metric.
Credit: Brian Martin
Value
All this tech and design comes at a price. While we loved the performance of the Dyon, the fact that one biner costs more than many quickdraws on the market definitely took the wind out of our sails. While the price may turn off even the trustiest of trustafarians, there is no denying the high level of performance offered by the Dyon. If you're willing to part with the extra shillings required to rack up with these bad boys, you won't be disappointing.
Conclusion
The Dyon is an excellent carabiner. The operation is smooth throughout applications and will be appreciated by the leader just as much as the follower because of its unique snag free keylock gate and smooth nose. We put a significant amount of time into finding a problem with this carabiner but came up mostly empty-handed. If we wanted to be really picky, we would point out the 3kn of strength lost by putting a concave bend in the spine, but 21kn is strong. Yes there is a steep cost to get into the Dyon game but once you're in there, you are sure to have a good time.
The bottom line is that the Dyon is an excellent carabiner. We found the handling, clipping, unclipping, and design to be top notch.
Credit: Brian Martin
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Brian Martin
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