CAMP USA Dyon Review

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.