The gridlock extra loop thingy is a pain to use. It prevents the biner from being loaded side ways on a climbing harness, but if you want stuff to move freely, it's rather annoying. The magnetron style biners are slightly thinner, but still pretty bulky and the biners with this kind of closure (both from black diamond and skylotec) are pretty big (Large HMS or belay style) biners.
Just looking at the REI site again, you might try this one:
http://www.rei.com/product/847491/edelrid-hms-strike-slider-automatic-locking-carabinerI have no experience with this particular model, but it is brand new state-of-the-art,rather expensive, and advertised on the internet, so it must be good....
I am not at all sure that you really need the locking feature for a key ring. Dimensions are rarely, if ever, given in most descriptions because biners are a standard size, just large enough to accommodate a climbing rope and a sling or two. You will have to accept a biner that is about 4" in length. I wouldn't even consider the smaller toy biners. In my opinion, they are quite dangerous. Someone is bound to use them in a critical situation, with disastrous results.
He is not going to use it for climbing, so it does not have to be load bearing. If you are going to climb, I agree to only carry climbing biners.
I have several of these:
bison design
that i use to attach things to my pack.
the screw lock does not loosen - for me - ymmv
not meant to support weight.
rei has them - $5.00.
In my experience those cheap 'not for climbing' aluminium carabiners break pretty quickly. They are just not very durable.
Does the biner needs to be a locking one? I use a small non locking steel biner. I might have been using my current one for a decade now, have not broken it, nor lost keys.
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