Getting my first wetsuit and as someone who isn’t a strong swimmer and even weaker kick looking into mid to up range suits with good floating abilities.
The three mentioned once are all around €500 with different discounts and seem to fit my requirements quite well.
Any experience or suggestions? Which one would you choose……also if someone knows where to get one of those for €400;) please let me know.
And for everyone wanting to give me the great advice that fit is all that matters and I should work on my technique… thanks but thats not the question!
I have the Huub Varman after using a BlueSeventy top-range suit for 10+ years. and I can say that the lift I get on the legs is almost too much. But I love it - super nice suit. Maybe I´d wish the “smart” zipper system would be more standard.
mainly you need to think about fit and morphology the sailfish tend to have a longer upper body
while orca and huub tend to be a bit shorter while most people can fit all 3 there is not an insignifnact amount of people where the above makes a significant enough difference in fit.
the other tendency is while huub suits have a very good lift they tend to be more fragile.
Respect to the fact that there’s personal views in all this, but Huubs were very popular in our club as that was the main brand the local tri shop stocked, but we discussed this last week at the final OW of the year - pretty much everyone has/is going elsewhere in future. The Huubs are really flexible, but have no lifespan (in ocean/saltwater). Not just nicks despite being carefully handled ( gloved, etc) but the actual rubber just perishes within a season.
Now to be fair the one person with a varman got better life, but that may be as he was a lazy sod and only turned up twice since he bought it 6 years ago…
And the ‘smart’ breakaway zip. Again, may be it works for some, but based on the faffing at the start of squad each week then you do a lot better than we do! For me then it never broke away at the end of a race no matter how much yanking I did, yet almost without failing I’d either forget to connect at the bottom before putting on, or I’d pull it off the top when I was getting ready to start the swim.
I moved to a De Soto 2 piece and enjoy swimming in it a lot more than the Huubs - don’t get the cold water running into my spine as I get in, and easier to put on/take off. That said, I’m not convinced it’s that fast a suit for me. I’ve had Orcas, and 2XU suits before, and to be fair the only thing I’d say is the old ones last a lot better than the new ones. New ones from Blue Seventy, Huub, etc etc do seem more stretchy, but actual swim speed/times don’t seem any different.
I will echo @integrator comments. I had a TYR Hurricane Cat5 & Roka Maverick before my sailfish One. I will never switch off of the One. Great bouyancy and incredible flexibility in the shoulders for the price point.
I have a Orca Apex float. I like it, but I feel like it broke down pretty quick. I swim in wetsuits a lot, and probably don’t take great care of my wetsuits, but it didn’t hold up great.
I had the Roka X2 and boy were my shoulder sore after 2500 yds. I actually couldn’t swim for a while. Could be my form or something I do different in a FS, but the two swims I had in it, it just made me do something my shoulders didn’t like.