Trango Phase Carabiner Review

The Trango Phase weighs 30 grams and has a 23 mm gate opening. It comes in a blue version with a slight bend to the gate (for the rope end of a sling or quickdraw) and in eight colors with a straight gate. You can purchase them singly, in six or eight rack packs, and preassembled as a quickdraw and or with a sling for an alpine draw. Note that, while we like it for a racking carabiner, it works best with cams that have a skinnier sling (10-14mm) vs. the wider 18 mm one found on the Black Diamond Camalots.

Performance Comparison

Clipping

The Phase wasn't the top scorer when it comes to clipping due to its smaller than average size.

The gate tension on the wire felt fine — not too tight and not too soft — but once again, the smaller size made it harder to clip, particularly when compared to the larger choices, which scored a bit better for this application in our side by side testing.

Unclipping

When it comes to ease of unclipping, the Phase has a few things working against it, namely the notch in the gate and the smaller size of the gate opening. Here's were larger carabiners, and those with some notch protection, have an advantage.

With a smaller carabiner and a smaller gate clearance, you have to be really mindful when unclipping from a bolt or a sling. Snagging is more of a nuisance than anything, but it's hard not to fault carabiners that do it when there are so many now that don't. There are now a few different options where the notch is buried in the nose, and it makes unclipping slightly easier in many situations.

Weight

The Trango Phase weighs 30 grams each, or 1.1 ounces. The Phase is not the lightest option out there, and you could go lighter still. The BD MiniWire is a little smaller than the Phase and slightly harder to handle, but it's 7 grams lighter, and that adds up. Whether portability is the most important thing to you could depend on a lot of factors, including the difficulty and access to your climb, along with your own strength and abilities. If your climbing objectives tend to be miles into the backcountry and then multiple pitches off the ground, going lighter is key. If you're looking to outfit a single-pitch trad cragging rack, you might not need to shave so many ounces and can instead focus on usability or price.

Gate Clearance

For such a small carabiner, we were surprised by how well it did on our three-rope test.

While it didn't have as much clearance as the much larger options we tested it against, it still took two loops easily, and we could still partially open the gate with the third in there. The basket on the Phase is a little deeper than others that are a similar size and this probably helped things out a bit.

Handling

The Trango Phase is on the small side, and it received a lower score for this category as well. The importance of this category often comes down to hand size and intended use. Even if you have large hands, you might be able to get used to something that is a little smaller, but once you put gloves on, or are planning a long route where your hands will get a little swollen and fatigued, a smaller carabiner can work against you. The advantage to something smaller, particularly for racking your cams, is that they can fit on your harness a little better, should you prefer to rack that way vs. using a shoulder sling. We personally like to have both options available to us, but can't necessarily afford a double set of carabiners! If you know that ice or big walls are in your climbing plans, then something larger is the way to go. You can always choose a larger carabiner for your alpine draws as well and save the small ones for your cams.

One thing to keep in mind with this carabiner is that the top of the carabiner is a little narrow, and some of our cams with wider slings didn't always sit well in it. The pull of the rope would shift the orientation of the carabiner to the side, which could potentially result in it cross-loading in a fall. We didn't have this happen to us in the field, but just in case we'd recommend pairing it with models that have a narrower sling, say in the 14mm range, rather than an 18mm sling like the ones found on the Black Diamond Camalots.

Value

The Phase retail for roughly the same price as most of the other budget options available, and of course, you can get a better per unit price if you buy in bulk by selecting a rack pack. We think that compared to the other low priced options, these perform a bit better for most options, and are bigger, and thus easier to handle than the tiniest choices. As the best of the low-cost options, they are indeed a solid value.

Conclusion