As I’m thinking of buying a new wetsuit any opinions would be nice. I like my old DeSoto but I’ve got the feeling that the one-piece wetsuits have improved over the last few years with greater flexibility and ease of use. Anybody got strong opinions on the latest and greatest from Zoot, QR etc.
I know Tom has undertaken many wetsuit experiments but will we see the article soon?
SteveMc
p.s. Yes, I know fit is all important… QR and Ironman fit me, Orca doesn’t.
I would recommend the 2XU line of wetsuits.
There is a wide range of sizes so you can find a good fit for sure.
The design of the suit focuses on buoyancy, which equates to speed, which is why we wear wetsuits afterall.
the seamless front 5mm panel gives you the biggest benefit, and also the 5mm is continued on the sides, so when you roll during the catch phase of the stroke, you do not lose buoyancy. this gives you excellent distance per stroke, and makes the suit very fast in the water.
There is an '07 wetsuit review in one of the current tri magazines, I forget which one. Of course, these reviews read more like paid advertisements to me.
I agree that the 2XU is a hell of a suit; assuming the fit is right for you. I absolutely love mine and don’t feel like one of the herd at the starting line. I especially love the way the 2XU fits around the edges, more of a sporty cut if that makes sense. Subtle differences in the suit tells you 2XU’s design team is focused on every last detail.
“I absolutely love mine and don’t feel like one of the herd at the starting line.”
Another suit to check out if you don’t want to feel like one of the heard, is the Nineteen line. We are focussed solely on making the best wetsuits for triathletes. That’s all we do. We back that up with great customer service to dealers and to our customers.
hahaha…how many wetsuit reps are gonna post on here? 
“how many wetsuit reps are gonna post on here?”
The smart ones and the ones that care about their customers
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Fair point but at least they have to stick their head out and take any cr*p that comes their way. De Soto manages to do quite well from that.
SteveMc
For what it’s worth (and I’m not a dealer), my Zoot Z1 full suit is awesome. It’s pricy (though not nearly as expensive as the Zenith), but it fits me great and is super comfortable. The wrist seals seemed strange at first, but this suit kept me warm enough in water in the high 50’s.
I’ll copy that. My Nineteen is the best - awesome fit, very fast, and a great company to work with.
We are focussed solely on making the best wetsuits for triathletes. That's all we do
Does that mean nineteen does not produce cycling shoes anymore ? That is the most horrible tri product I have ever bought. hope the wetsuits are better designed..
“Does that mean nineteen does not produce cycling shoes anymore?”
The other product areas that Nineteen had dabbled in over the years have been de-emphasised for the time being and we are totally focused on producing the best wetsuits in the business.
In business and in life, it’s best to know what your strengths and weaknesses are. Clearly, wetsuits is our strength and we will continue to design and develop what we believe are the best wetsuits that we can, and back that up with outstanding dealer support and service.
Actually, we just recieved a shipment of the new 2007 QR suits. We will be adding those to our test along with a few others.
We will keep you posted on the results.
Fleck-
Out of curiousity, since I’m in the market for a full suit…
If I’m right smack in the middle of 2 sizes, should I size up or down. Considering buying from you, but I’m between a WXS and WS. Do you have any info on dimensions?
Thanks!
Jodi
Hi Jodi, It’s Eric. I cant answer your question but i thought I’d say hi! Hope training is going well! :O)
The 07 wetsuit test was born on a simple premise that has, to a degree, become a pandora’s box. It is the biggest undertaking we’ve managed for the website but also potentially one of the most beneficial for reader’s at large and therefore will bring us the most traffic of any single feature I wager.
It started out with Sarah and I swimming in a few different suits and timing it, then hoping to report which ones are fastest. It isn’t that simple though, and people here on ST pointed that out.
Some things we have learned so far in the test include:
The single most important factor in wetsuit performance is *not *how the suit fits, but *how you put it on. *In other words, you can have a well fitted suit that, if donned poorly, will really slow you down. Conversly, if you put on a slightly ill fitting suit perfectly, it makes up for a lot of fit problems with the suit. Putting any wetsuit on correctly is the most important factor in wetsuit performance. We saw either no or very little difference in any suit above $300 with the exception of the QR Superfull (which we *did not *sell at the time of the test, but have started selling since) and the Blue 70 Helix. Other “supersuits” around $500 give or take produced mediocre results compared to $300 price point full suits. They were all about the same. A two piece suit is more forgiving with donning and doffing and is often a faster suit than a one piece. There seems to be significant validity to the two piece suit concept. I am amazed more companies have not produced two piece suits. The top and bottom working independantly seem to forgive a lot in poor swim technique and sloppy suit donning. The suit thar was “fastest” for me was not the same suit that was “fastest” for Sarah. The suit that was “fastest” for me was *much *faster than others I swam in. Not so in the case of Sarah. Her best suit came to to a very small difference. We are trying to expand the test to include a measure of expressing wetsuit dry weight to wetsuit bouyancy- negative weight as measured while totally submerged. This is tricky and requires a deep pool and a guy with either a snorkel or, ideally, a SCUBA rig. I’m thinking of enlisting the local SCUBA club for help with this test. Suggests appreciated here. The idea is to express which suit is most bouyant expessed in a ratio of dry weight to negative weight… One questio may be, does this statistic even have any validity to triathletes?
That’s the thing. One concept here is that some of the suits *are *suits we sell in the store and some are suits we bought as a typical retail consumer would. A couple suits were lent or given to us by manufacturers who wanted face time in the test. We bought over $3500 in wetsuits at retail and another $5K at wholesale so far, and we have another $3000 worth of suits to purchase before the testing is done.
Based on what we see we decide what we buy and sell here in the store. Everyone has a chance to try out for the team and it gives us the opportunity to be able too speak knowledgeably about the suits we sell and why we sell the brands we do.
We’ll see how it turns out.
The single most important factor in wetsuit performance is *not *how the suit fits, but *how you put it on. *In other words, you can have a well fitted suit that, if donned poorly, will really slow you down. Conversly, if you put on a slightly ill fitting suit perfectly, it makes up for a lot of fit problems with the suit. Putting any wetsuit on correctly is the most important factor in wetsuit performance.
Tom, will you expand on putting a wetsuit on correctly? I’ve never seen this discussed before. Have you written any articles on this subject?
Jodi,
Since it is inappropriate for a gentleman to ever ask a woman’s weight in public, I am sending you a PM and we can carry on the conversation there, but for the record here is the size-chart information for the WXS and WS sizes in the Nineteen line:
WXS: weight 100 - 115, height 5’ - 5’6"
WS: weight 115 -130, height 5’2" - 5’8"
Hope this helps.
Absolutely: We will expand at length on the correct donning of a wetsuit. We’re doing a seperate feature on proper suit donning for exactly that reason- because it is so important.
Several folks have beat us to this though, including the older Ironman Wetsuits/Blue 70 wetsuits page that used to have a fine tutorial on donning wetsuits.
I just did a Google search on “proper wetsuit donning” and “triathlon wetsuit use” and really didn’t come up with much. Interestingly (to me) was the fact that an older article from our website featuring wetsuit information that did come up even though it is now pretty out of date. That only reinforces the need for new info.
Here’s a cool video of how to put on & take off a De Soto suit.
http://www.desotosport.com/wetsuits/video.html
Hopefully the link works