Petzl Ange S Review

Overview

The Ange S is Petzl’s take on the wiregate carabiner, and it doesn’t look like anything else on the market. Instead of a bent loop of wire, it uses a single straight rod — Petzl calls it “MonoFil” — running through an H-shaped frame, which is why it’s often described as looking like a toothpick stuck through a raisin. At 28 grams, it’s built for people counting grams on multi-pitch and alpine routes, not as an everyday cragging biner.

Key Specs

Spec	Detail
Weight	28.0 g
Gate type	MonoFil wire gate (single straight rod)
Nose type	Keylock
Frame profile	H-shaped cross-section
Certification	CE EN 12275 type B, UIAA
Sizing	”S” (small) — smaller/lighter sibling to the Ange L (34 g)

Performance

The MonoFil gate is the whole story with this carabiner, so let’s start there. Petzl built it because they had never released a wiregate carabiner before, citing an inability to find a design that wouldn’t weaken over time under the roughly 20,000 open-close cycles a gate needs to survive. The straight-rod design was their workaround, and on paper it’s clever — you get the reduced weight of a wire gate with a cleaner, smoother clip that’s closer to a solid-gate feel. The Keylock nose backs that up: the keylock system helps eliminate the possibility of the nose getting stuck on a sling or bolt, and there’s a small hook-free profile that won’t catch on gear loops or bolt hangers the way notched noses can.

Weight-wise, it lands in a reasonable but not class-leading spot. Outdoor Gear Lab’s tester put it plainly: the Ange is light, comes in two sizes, and neither is THE lightest for its size — it’s not lighter than the CAMP Nano 22, but it is light. For reference, Black Diamond’s Oz is also 28 g and their Neutrino is 36 g, so the Ange S is competitive but not a standout in the ultralight-biner arms race.

Where it gets more interesting is handling. The straight-gate clip takes an adjustment period — one long-term user reviewer noted it takes a bit of getting used to when clipping the rope into the carabiners, though most people report acclimating within a few pitches. Once you’re used to it, the action is smooth, and the subtle rope-retention notch on the spine does a decent job keeping the biner oriented correctly on a bolt or sling.

The elephant in the room is durability of that single-rod gate under lateral stress. One long-term user on CampSaver flagged a real issue: there’s one serious problem — the gate seems easy to bend sideways, and once that happens, it doesn’t close properly unless you push it in, which they consider a fatal flaw in any biner expected to work at full load. To be fair, this happened to only one of their Ange biners, so it’s not universal, but it’s a legitimate data point against Petzl’s marketing claim of superior gate durability. On the flip side, other long-term owners report the opposite experience — one Amazon reviewer said that after five years of daily use they saw not so much as a creak from the spring, calling it a solid item. So durability seems to vary, possibly depending on how the biner gets loaded and whether it’s ever cross-loaded or side-impacted against rock.

Where this carabiner earns its keep is as a bolt-end or fixed-point biner rather than the rope-end clipper on a quickdraw. As one REI reviewer summed up: it makes an incredible bolt-end carabiner, since a big carabiner isn’t necessary on the bolt end where you’re not fiddling with clipping a rope. That tracks with how Petzl markets it too — it’s especially suited for mountaineering and multi-pitch alpine climbs where every gram counts — situations where you’re racking a lot of biners and the S’s smaller stature and low weight add up across a whole kit.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Genuinely light at 28 g, competitive with other ultralight offerings without going full-boutique-expensive
• Keylock nose resists snagging on slings, bolts, and gear loops
• Smooth, solid-gate-like clip once you adjust to the straight-rod action
• Good choice for racking or as a bolt-end biner where you’re not manipulating it constantly
• Small footprint saves rack space on long multi-pitch days

Cons:

• Straight MonoFil gate has a learning curve for clipping technique
• At least one reported case of the gate bending sideways under load and failing to close properly afterward
• Not the lightest option in its weight class — CAMP’s Nano 22 beats it
• Limited color options compared to Petzl’s other carabiner lines, which matters if you’re color-coding a trad rack
• Small size can feel fiddly for people with larger hands or in cold-weather gloved conditions

Who Should Buy This

The Ange S makes sense for alpine climbers and multi-pitch trad climbers who are actively trying to shave grams off a rack and don’t mind a bit of an adjustment period on the clip. It’s a poor match if you want a single carabiner style to cover everything from sport quickdraws to belay devices to cams — the small size and unconventional gate make it more of a specialist tool than a do-it-all biner.

Verdict

The Ange S delivers on its core promise — a light, keylock wiregate carabiner that clips smoothly and takes up less rack space — but the unconventional MonoFil gate is a genuine trade-off, not just a novelty. It’s not the featherweight champion of its category, and there’s at least anecdotal evidence the gate can be vulnerable to sideways bending under load. I’d call it a solid 7.5/10: worth adding to an alpine rack for racking and bolt-end duty, but I wouldn’t build an entire quickdraw set around it without trying one on your local crag first.