A sling has one job with two conflicting requirements. Walking, you want it short and tight so the rifle stays against your body and does not swing into things. Shooting, you want it long enough to get the rifle up and, if you use it, to loop your support arm into for stability.
A quick-adjust sling does both with one hand and without looking. That is the entire feature and it is worth paying for. Everything else — padding, webbing width, color — is comfort.
The safety question is hardware. Open metal snap hooks can be worked open by webbing twisting under load, by a pack strap, or by a branch, and once open there is nothing retaining them. Closed loops and push-button QD swivels do not have that failure mode, and the price difference is a few dollars.
Choosing a sling
Two-point, one-point or three-point
Two-point attaches at the front and rear and is the right answer for almost everyone — it carries the rifle securely and supports a shooting loop. One-point attaches at a single point behind the receiver, is fast to transition between shoulders, and lets the rifle swing into you when you move. Three-point is a legacy design that mostly gets in the way.
Attachment hardware
Push-button QD swivels are the cleanest solution if your rifle has QD sockets — secure, and removable in seconds without tools. Loops of webbing around a sling stud or a rail attachment are the simplest and cannot fail open. Open snap hooks are the one to avoid.
Padding, if the rifle is heavy
A 1.25-inch unpadded strap is fine on a light carbine and cuts into your shoulder on a heavy hunting rifle carried all day. Padding adds bulk and it is worth it above about eight pounds.
The loop, if you shoot from it
A traditional shooting loop around the support arm removes a great deal of wobble in kneeling and sitting positions, and it is a genuinely learnable skill that costs nothing. It needs a sling long enough and adjustable enough to set up quickly, which is another argument for quick-adjust.
Noise
Metal hardware rattles. For hunting, that matters. Polymer hardware, or taped and tucked metal, is quieter, and it is the reason Magpul's polymer sliders have the following they do.
How these were picked
I haven't handled these. Here's what I did instead.
Everyone in this category says they tested twenty of these. I haven't tested any, and I say so. What I do instead: read the manufacturer's manual and published specification, compile the numbers that decide the purchase, do the arithmetic in the open, check the live price, and name one product to skip. The scores above are judgments from that research against a published rubric — they are not measurements I took, because I do not have a lab and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
