Kryptonite Evolution 790 Folding Lock

The Kryptonite Evolution 790 Folding Lock is easy to use and easy to carry, and for those reasons it’s a good choice if you’re on and off your bike a lot in town. It’s not especially secure, though, and because of that I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re leaving your bike unattended for long periods.

> Buy now: Kryptonite Evolution 790 Folding Lock for £76.50 from Santafixie

Link locks are popular because they pack down small and so are easy to carry. This isn’t a light lock at over 1,400g, but it is nice and compact and would fit in the side pocket of a commuting rucksack, for example, when a D lock is a lot more cumbersome.

It’s a nice lock to use, as well. One of the issues with link locks is that it’s sometimes difficult to get the lock mechanism lined up, but the Kryptonite has a swivelling head that makes that job loads easier, and also increases the effective size of the lock.

The lock mechanism also locks automatically when you click it together, which some others don’t, and there’s a barrel cover to keep grime out of the mechanism.

Two keys are supplied.

At 90cm I found it long enough for most situations, without it feeling unwieldy in use, and there’s a generous rubber coating on all of the links that’ll protect your bike from knocks and scrapes.

The Evolution 790 comes with a bike mount for carrying the lock, and it’s very good. It attaches to your bottle bosses, although you also get two plastic jubilee clips that you can use if you don’t want to tie up a bottle cage space, or you don’t have one. I fitted it to the top tube of an e-bike during testing and I found the clips very secure. The other nice thing about the mount is the sprung clip, which tightens down on the lock to cut out any rattles, and releases easily with a quick press of the orange button on the side.

Everything about the lock and the mount feels well designed. And because you can easily mount it to your bike you’re much less likely to forget it.

On to security, then. How did the Kryptonite Evolution 790 get on in our big lock-breaking test ? Well, I think it’s fair to say that it was the best (just) of a class of lock that didn’t impress all that much. The Evolution 790 was one of three folding link locks – the Hiplok Switch and the Abus Bordo 6200K being the others – and I was through the 5.4mm hardened steel inside the link, and off with the ageing Peugeot racer, in just 23 seconds. The Hiplok took a second less, and the Abus Bordo was the quickest to cut of any of the locks, lasting a mere 13 seconds.

There are a couple of things to note. Firstly, the shape of the plates in a link lock such as this is quite an inviting one for an angle grinder to attack, and also because it’s articulated it’s easier to wrestle it into a good position for cutting.

The other downside of the articulated design is that you’re only ever going to need to cut it once, because then you can just drag it off the bike like a chain. A good D lock, on the other hand, requires two cuts in order to make a big enough hole to get your frame through it.

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There’s no reason you couldn’t use some of the materials that are employed in some of the safer D locks in a lock like this: ceramics, harder compound alloys, abrasive surface coatings, that sort of thing. That might make for an excellent lock, because as I’ve previously said, link locks like this are nice to use and easy to carry. This isn’t an excellent lock: we gave it a road.cc security score of 45 based on its price, weight, and resistance to attack. That’s much nearer the bottom of the pile than the top, and neither of the other link locks did much better.

Despite that the Evolution 790 is rated as Sold Secure Bicycle Gold, and Kryptonite also has its own Anti-Theft Protection Offer, which you can register for on its website, and the Evolution 790 offers cover up to £1,500, which might offer some peace of mind if you’re leaving your bike out and about for long periods.

Conclusion

Buying a lock isn’t just about how long it’ll resist an angle grinder, but at £129.99 this is an expensive lock, and for another £20 you could be buying the cheapest of the D locks that we didn’t get even close to cutting through in two minutes of attack time. The Evolution 790 looks the part, and it’s easy to use, and it comes with a nice bracket that makes it easy to carry, and for all those reasons it’s an easy lock to live with. But when push comes to shove, don’t expect the level of security you’ll get from even a fairly cheap D lock: the £50 Halfords Advanced lock lasted four times as long as this. For that reason it’s hard to recommend, really, even though it has a lot going for it otherwise.

Verdict

Easy to use and easy to carry folding lock that’s easy to like, but ultimately not that secure

> Buy now: Kryptonite Evolution 790 Folding Lock for £76.50 from Santafixie

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