Mammut bionic crosslock carabiner 0/5 stars

This carabiner is on the expensive side. I wouldn't have gotten it, but through some retailer mistakes and stocking issues they ended up sending me this thing for the price of a cheaper locking binder with a belay retainer.

Stay away from this thing. It's too fancy for it's own good. The belay retainer doesn't do its job well and it is prone to major malfunction.

- the belay retainer is easier to push up than down. This means it's harder to load your belay loop into the retainer than it is for your belay loop to come out of the retainer. I've used this with some casual lead soloing and the belay retainer didn't keep the device from crossloading.

- I took this carabiner up Tatooine.  After one long day in Zion it started to get very hard to open. When you open the gate it pushes the belay retainer down. But sand got into the ball and spring of the belay retainer and kept it from working smoothly. This was a pain on the climb and it only got worse. When I got home I ran it under some water and wiggled the belay retainer in an effort to clear it out. Now it is permanently stuck in the closed position. A piece of sand seems to be jammed between the ball in the belay retainer and the path it slides along. I can't even get this to open now.

Thanks for the review, I wondered how durable these would be, I guess it has an appropriate name, yours is now cross locked.

Thank you for the heads up! Looked it up and see Backcountry has them for $40! 

I've been in love with the Mammut Smart HMS locker for some time. I bought like 3 of them, no it's 4 - they had a sweet pink one on sale that nobody was buying and marked down hard. I've had them on the closest thing to sandstone around here up at Coethedral and never had a jam or an issue. The aluminum on the round wide HMS end will wear and make double grooves from rappelling. It literally takes a couple seconds to put someone on belay all locked and it takes down just as quick. If you are doing long routes with lots of pitches it's super boon. Plus regular price now on Backcountry is $16.95. I like mine better than what looks to be the current offering. 

Current (blue)

One of mine below, note the cross piece totally protects the gate. I like that, I doubt Mammut would make a faulty product, but there was some fella that died doing an Aussie style rap when the gate on his locking biner was crossloaded by his figure 8. 

I'd bought the DMM Belay Master Carabiner when it came out and it was great, but the Mammut Smart kicks it ass. Same with the Edelrid Strike and that POS from Black Diamond, the Gridlock. Getting them off your belay loop and putting it on sucks time. It might not be the best for soloing but I've used it for that. IMO if you like multipitch and don't want to be screwing around wasting time, the Mammut Smart Carabiner is the best belay biner out there. 

Completely agree. This carabiner is useless to prevent crossloading due to the spring being too weak. Can't believe mammut released this. It's like they didn't even test it

The middle child is always forgotten and neglected, the Crag Smart HMS was omitted.  A couple of stinkers from Mammut, the Moses and Rotor, plus the Hate the Gate Smart.