For years now I've been thinking we ought to sell a lock, just one, because I don't like facing a selection of two dozen and trying to decide between light and small but not that safe, and big and hunky and pricey and safe but too much to carry most of the timeand I didn't want to present you with the same wall-o-locks you can see at REI or Performance.

So after five years of not selling locks (and personally rarely using them), I found one I'm actually going to use and offer out there to anybody. It's made in Germany, which, for a lock, sounds good right off the bat. It's made by ABUS, which apparently is a famous German lock maker.

It's a double-layer cable lock with nearly but not quite the security of a U-lock. (It's probably as good as a lousy U-lock.) You can't cut a U-lock with bolt cutters; this one you can. You can't use a U-lock around a tree; this one you can. This is lighter and smaller than most U-locks, though not as small as the mini-ones. But it wraps around frame tubes and wheels and posts easier, and will certainly stop most thefts, and since no bike will stop all thefts, that's not bad.

The rubber sheath covers super hard (hacksaw-resistent) tubular steel cable coverings. It's unlikely that anybody's going to cut through these to even get at the cable. And cables, though cut-able with a saw, are not swift and easy to cut. Saw teeth catch on them, so the motion is short and jerky even when the cable is held in a vise. When the lock is not in a vise--when it's looped around your bike and a parking meter, it would take a stupid, strong,  persistent crook to try to break thru with a hacksaw. Those kind exist, but still, this is a tough, smart German lock.

It has a key, not a combo. It's easy to usemeaning the cable twists when you need to pull it around a pole or a tree trunk; and it's long enough to grab things a U-lock can't. It's 33.46 inches plus the lock part when stretched out, and double-up, it grabs more than any U-lock.

You can twist and fold it down to a 7-inch diameter double-loop, which is small enough to fit into a Keven's bag (tight fit but it goes); and it comes with a mounting bracket that fits all but any round main-frame tube on a halfway normal bike.

I tried to cut it with a fairly new hacksaw, and after a furious minute, no progress. Just the rubber sheath cut, and the metal beneath it didn't have the slightest groove at all. And guess what? There's another separate spiral sheath under the first one, and if the guy gets through that, then there's a whole bunch of confounding other cables inside it.

There are probably two hundred good locks out there. Each has its trade-offs, and you can make a case for any of them, because no fools designed them. This one here is on the light and compact side, given its security. At $60, it's a little up there, but it is a really good lock.

Weight without bracket: 23.2 ounces.
With bracket: 25.6 ounces.
Comes with two keys and one frame mounted bracket.

"Millennioflex Phantom 896" is the official Abus name for this cablelock.