I begged/borrowed/stole just about every belay device on the market and the B52 has them beat. Smooth almost frictionless feed, solid locking, controllable abseil, long life. I've used both the early thinner model and now have the slightly more solid revised model, the other change in the update appears to be a more rounded rocker which makes the transition from feed to lock-off slightly smoother.

On a side note, because of the square edge and easy feed, the B52 is brilliant at prussik minding for progress-capture in a hauling setup.

Very light and easy to work with. However, after about 70 pitches, i've needed to retire it. The groove inside the leading edge makes me nervous, since it isn't as beefy as a tubular device. This portion is now sharp and i shudder to think of it cracking on a long rap. Speaking of such, this device heats up quickly on raps, since it has much less material to dissipate the friction heat. I'm probably going to move to a slight larger device next, but for fast and light, this is it!

I really like this belay device. It feeds so smooth, raps smoothly, is very light, and is autoblocking as well. My favorite device for all around so far.

OK, it's a little premature since I just used it today, but I used it on my thick rope (11m) and it handled SO smoothly. Got the Petzl attache with it, and the combo seems to work like a dream. feeding out and taking in has never been so easy. Rapelling was also very smooth and controlled. Hands down, handles better than my ATC XP.

My favorite belay device so far.

I'd give it a 4.5 if I could, but since I've never used anything worthy of a 5, I'm grading on a curve.

I find it works as advertised. The main caveat is that you have to use a round stock carabiner, like a Petzl Atache. This has been said before, but people still miss it. Any time you hear complaints about it binding or not working smoothly, I promise you it's because someone ignored the directions and used some funky shaped forged biner with. So go back and read that part again.

As a regular belay/rap device, the b52 is smooth and amazingly consistent from one rope size to another. I'm fairly heavy, so rapelling with devices that don't give enough friction is scary. The B52 is better in this regard than both the standard ATC and the Reverso. What's great is that it gives a workable amount of friction even with skinny half ropes. My Trango Jaws is even better for this, but the b52 is plenty good.

For autoblocking it works as well as anything else. It has the advantage of working well with a wide range of rope sizes. It has the same disadvantage as all the others: the procedure for lowering a climber. Unfortunately, it will take a radically new concept to fix this problem.

The only annoyance I've had with it is trying to use it with a stiff, lumpy, fat gym rope. It bound up badly, and I got better results with an ATC. This shouldn't matter to too many people anymore, since most gyms now require a gri gri.