Why NEOX is not a GriGri - Long Term Review

all right

Neo or maybe how French would say new

which is not a new gri petel is listing

this as a completely new blay device so

let's see why I had this for about 5

months I did a bunch of

climbing I did a bunch of

testing and I have a bunch of mixed

feelings about this

meox so about a year ago I got an email

from Sebastian petzel turns out that his

grandpa developed the original idea of

grigory so I felt very honored by such

email and he offered me to test this and

said that I can say whatever I want

about it so this video is not sponsored

by petel now what was funny when later I

was exchanging details with someone from

petel team and they said that it is safe

even in the case of your strange

experiments in case you haven't seen I

have made a video explaining the physics

of how gri works and I showed a bunch of

ways how it would not

work oh [ __ ] so let's do some of those

strange experiments and compare grigory

with neox while grigory weighs 175 G

neox broke my scale because my scale

doesn't like blay devices above 200 G

but Jokes Aside it's 60 G heavier and if

you would hold them side by side you

would feel a difference however this

extra weight did not seem to bother me

much while delaying now while grigory

has a very simple mechanism where a

bunch of frictional forces contribute to

overcoming the tension in the spring and

then the cam moves and pinches the Rope

again I have explained everything in

this video and it's very interesting and

I highly recommend to see that because

Neo actually kept all of that design you

can see there is still same spring

camming

action but now we have a wheel which can

spin but also it can move up and down

and if it's in up position the wheel is

blocked from spinning and at that point

it acts essentially the same as grig

[Music]

so what does all of that mean in

practice well let's start with the good

the Rope does run really smoothly for

the device it's actually very

satisfying it's super

smooth however notice that while I'm

feeding slack I'm not touching the

device and if this is how you like bling

and maybe you are coming from tubular

Style devices you can probably stop this

video right here go buy this and you

will be really

satisfied thank you for

watching now if you stayed let me

present some of my speculations I think

when petzel was developing the original

grigory this smooth action was actually

what we were trying to achieve

however if you try to feed the slack

like this with original grigory

depending on your rope thickness and

many other factors it's very likely that

the grigory will simply lock and you

will have some trouble but creative

climbers came up with a solution is to

press on the cam to disengage it and

continue feeding slack like this which

actually worked so well that if you

would go to any at least Europe cracks

you would see that majority of people is

belaying like this right

now and of course there is many wrong

ways how to do this and I showed a bunch

of wrong ways in the same video however

if you keep the rope in your brck hand

even if you're pressing on the cam and

the climber would fall at that moment

the grigory is most likely to lock and

actually if you check the manual of

grigory you will find this listed as an

option of giving slack fast but guess

what if you check the manual of neox

there is only one way to give slack now

so here are some more of of my

speculations original grigory is

actually designed so well that it's

quite hard to make it fail and that's

why it became so popular and that's why

so many of bad ways of using it became

very popular and that's why we still

have accidents with

it unfortunately so this all brought a

lot of bad rep for the grigory which is

kind of strange when one of the safest

devices is the most criticized probably

devices and this is what I think petel

tried to fix by hinting that you know

what do not touch the device however

giving slack like this became so popular

not only because this other method

wasn't always

reliable giving slack like this is

actually more comfortable and bling like

this is more comfortable and here are a

couple of reasons I can always give as

much slack as I want and my blade device

is not falling down while I'm doing that

and I'm in the comfortable position now

with Neo you can actually give slack

quite fast but the delay device will be

bouncing all over the place however

there is another issue if I give slack

and I prepare to give more slack and now

I need to take well guess what first I

need to bring my Brak hand closer to the

device before I can take so I need to do

some arm juggling and only then I can

take with the other method if I'm giving

slack and suddenly I need to take well I

just take that's much more practical so

can you belay like this with Neo well

the manual doesn't say anything about

this I tried asking petel and I still

haven't received reply to my emails so

if I will do I will add a pinned comment

now in practice it does work but check

this out or listen this

out so yeah it makes a ratcheting sound

when you try to pull the Rope fast and

and I gave this device to my friends to

try they were like is this broken so I

think it's not broken however it's very

noticeable and if you are in very quiet

crack and somebody does I can only

imagine when this will become even more

popular and this is going to happen in

the

cracks okay let's say you don't care

about Tranquility at the cracks people

shout there anyway blast music dogs that

are barking so a bit of is no problem

for you and the only thing you care is

is it safe so same as grig if you press

on the cam but do not hold the Rope your

climber is going to un alive and since

the Rope runs smoother through Neo he or

she will unal life faster

so hold the Rope now what about a

completely No Hands situation first

let's start with a gri which as you can

see can definitely

slip but now let's switch to

Neo

whoa it falls uh

faster it actually falls faster it falls

smoother smooth death yeah you can have

a smooth

death with kind of wants to lock it

goes but it's not enough for it to lock

yeah seems like the gri is more grabby

and more likely to stop the fall in case

of no hand situation so it looks like a

slight downgrade compared to the grigory

in terms of safety and they said I won't

be able to make it fail with my strange

experiments but let's switch the gears a

little bit and let's talk about taking

the slack since the Rope runs much

smoother through the device my initial

thought was that it's going to be much

easier to take the slack for the last 5

months when I went climbing I kept

alternating between neox and gri and I

couldn't understand if it's easier to

help the climber with the new device or

not so let's do some more of my strange

experiments as they say first I tried

simple jump

taking but it was very hard to feel the

difference except that Neo was

clicking so then I built this setup

where I could compare the force needed

to lift up my weights essentially

comparing the friction inside the blade

device yeah so it's moving up at

0.65 0 64 so let's try the same with the

old

gri for some reason it feels harder but

it's reading the same

63

interesting

65 same

feel the same so I tried with 60 kog and

I couldn't feel the difference I tried

with 40 kilog and where still was no

difference which left me so confused

that I probably tried a thousand of

times to measure it again and again and

again until I just stopped the camera

and I noticed something which now

absolutely makes sense remember when I

said that the wheel can go up and and

once it's in up position it's locked and

then it acts the same as grigri well

duh it only spins while it's under

certain load so it's

easier but if you load it more then it

locks and then it's the same so this is

30

kg the wheel

spins and then it locks and now the

wheel is not spinning anymore

so now I want to figure out what's the

load needed for the wheel to stop

spinning and stop helping let's try 20

kg okay so now it's doing this weird

clicky clacky thing so that pretty much

explains why

this

happens let's see at what weight it

would just spin freely and be nice so at

15 and it goes easy to pull hard easy

hard easy hard easy hard it's

like okay this is only 5 kilos

it's still

clicking but less so it seems like above

20 kilos it's permanently locked below

20 kilos it's clicking clack clack clack

clack cl cl clck and only on very very

very minimal loads it's running very

smoothly

so disappointing I wanted always to run

smoothly and then catch fast that would

be ideal

device cl cl so yeah it is easier to run

the Rope through the device without load

but as soon as the load is applied which

is when you're helping your climber it

will start clicky clacky and then at

some point there is no difference

anymore so kind of an

improvement but could be better

oh and also another thing when I'm going

down sometimes the wheel needs to click

back into certain position before it Smo

again this is kind of annoying when

you're belaying sometimes when you want

to lower the climber just a little bit

there is this little jerk of like click

and then it's smooth for the rest of the

time let me show you this again

so what's the big takeaway of all of

this new invention I absolutely love how

smooth the Rope runs through the device

now don't get me wrong this is fantastic

I'm impressed by this design and if you

are delaying like this then as I already

said this is a massive upgrade to you

and you should definitely buy this you

will be very happy oh otherwise I do

understand the direction that petzel

took however I think that this is a

little bit of missed opportunity

original Gregory was one of the safest

devices on the market and if only

instead of trying to Advocate as to keep

the hands away from it they would have

made it somehow always lock maybe

similar to Revo if the Rope is running

at certain speed maybe it would lock

that would be amazing and no clicky

sounds

please and maybe improve a little bit

ergonomic how you are holding the device

and that would be the perfect bling

device for me personally all right now

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