Magnetpro 1700 lb Magnet — A Serious Upgrade for Under $40

My old magnet — a 500-something pounder I'd been dragging around for almost two years — had this thing it would do on bigger targets. It'd grab, you'd feel the weight shift, and then somewhere on the way up it'd just... let go. Like it was embarrassed it ever tried. I pulled nothing but a flattened tin can and an ancient padlock off a concrete bridge near me for three straight sessions because of that. The padlock I actually cared about. It hit the water before I even had it over the railing.

So I was already annoyed when I ordered the Magnetpro. Not at the magnet — at my previous setup. That probably colored things.

First thing I noticed when it showed up was the weight. It's denser than I expected for the size — sits in your hand and feels like something rather than nothing. The coating looked clean, no weird gaps near the eyebolt, threading felt solid when I ran a nut on it by hand. These are the little things you start checking after you've had a coating chip off a different magnet into a river and spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if it's going to rust out before next season.

The eyebolt itself is fine. Not spectacular. Fine.

First real outing with it was a canal I've done maybe a dozen times — good bottom, slow current, lots of old infrastructure running underneath from what I can only assume was some kind of industrial operation that nobody bothered to document. I've pulled bolts, bracket hardware, a piece of something that might've been a gate hinge, all from that same stretch. With the old magnet, anything over a few pounds was a coin flip on whether it'd hold to the surface. With this one I hauled up a chunk of angle iron — maybe eight, ten pounds, waterlogged and muddy — in one clean pull. Didn't slip. Didn't drop. Just came up.

That's not a miracle. That's just what a properly rated magnet is supposed to do. But if you've been running an underpowered setup for a while, it feels like a miracle the first time it works the way it should.

What's not great — and I want to be straight about this — is that 1700 lbs is a rated number, not a real-world guarantee. You're not going to lift 1700 lbs of steel off a riverbed with this thing. That number assumes flat, clean, full-contact surface, which the inside of a silted-up canal is absolutely not. Actual working pull in the mud is a fraction of that. Still meaningfully stronger than a beginner magnet. Still more than enough for most of what you're going to find. Just don't let the number set expectations that the conditions can't meet.

The rope situation is on you. It doesn't come with one. Budget accordingly.

For someone who's a few sessions in and starting to feel the ceiling on their starter magnet — this is exactly the upgrade that makes sense. You're not paying for branding. You're not paying for a kit with stuff you already have. You're just paying for a stronger magnet at a price that doesn't require you to think too hard about it.

I've put it through enough sessions now that the initial novelty is gone and it's just part of my kit. That's probably the best thing I can say about a piece of gear.