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Peak Design Replacement Anchors Ship
8 June 2018
We received replacement Anchor Links from Peak Design in the mail today, just a few days after the company announced a fraying problem with the prior design.
Replacement Anchor Pack. Includes four Anchors, two split rings and instructions.
The replacement pack includes four V4 Anchor Links, two triangular split rings and a small card with instructions.
The split rings themselves are smooth and should not cause the any version Anchor Link to fray, the card says. They're provided so you can attach an Anchor Link to eyelets too small to slip the thicker cords through.
As the Peak Design illustration below shows, the V3 Anchors used a thinner cord than the previous V4 Anchors.
Anchor Links. The four generations in a line-up (courtesy of Peak Design). V3 is the culprit.
That allowed them to slip through more eyelets than the V2 design but some of those eyelets have proven to be sharp enough to fray the V2 cord.
The new V4 Anchors use the beveled disc of the V3 design but revert to the thicker cords of the V2 design, which themselves have a color-warning wear system. As we noted in our Test Drive: Peak Design Straps in May 2015:
The unsafe red inner layer is wrapped in a yellow replacement warning layer under the original black safe layer. So as soon as you see yellow, you should swap out the link for a new one.
The V2 cords were made with Dyneema, which actually hardens instead of fraying, the company told us. Dyneema, used widely in climbing and sailing products, is prized for being durable while remaining flexible. V1 cords are Vectran and should be replaced when they start to fray badly.
The Peak Design video below thoroughly explains the situation:
None of the V3 Anchors we've used have frayed. We attribute that to the rather smooth eyelets and split rings on our Canon, Nikon and Olympus cameras and the smooth eyelets on the Peak Design quick release plates.