SUBX - INDEPENDENT REVIEW - Mark Powell

Sport Diver Technical Editor

In summary it’s a fantastic undersuit that does exactly what it was intended to do. It’s a two piece suit with a long john/salopette part as well as a jacket. The thermal properties are about equivalent to a 400g thinsulate or a 200g thinsulate with a set of arctics underneath. However it’s not as bulky as either of these alternatives. I’ve been using it in the UK at a variety of inland sites during Nov-Jan and so have been doing dives of between 20 and 90 mins in water temps of between 8 and 5 degrees. The suit has kept me comfortably warm even during longer runtimes. Inevitably it was my hands that got cold before my body.

I’ve also tested out its ability to keep me warm when flooded. Anyone who was at the Stoney Gig will have seen the results of this. On Saturday I dived in a partially flooded suit with both arms wet up to the shoulder and could hardly tell that I was wet. On the second dive a flood through the neck seal meant I was wet all the way to my feet. In this case I could tell I was wet by the water sloshing around the suit but the material wicked away the water leaving my skin quite dry. This allowed me to warm back up and kept me comfortable during the rest of the dive. On the Sunday I again had wet arms all the way to the shoulder. After taking off my dry suit I squeezed most of the water out of the arms and then proceeded to stand around in the car park for at least 2 hours chatting. My arms were still wet but the suit kept me warm. In a thinsulate I would have been freezing in no time at all. Even when you haven’t flooded your suit the windproofing keeps your warm when standing around a dive site. The first time I wore the suit I was doing a debrief after a dive for some students and after about 30mins realised that they were shivering in their thinsulates but I hadn’t noticed the temperature at all.

The other noticeable thing about the suit is that it looks good. You can quite easily wear it to and from the dive site, into the pub or shop after a dive all without looking like you are walking around in a giant babygrow. The jacket can be worn as a jacket on its own and I recently wore it into London to attend a BDSG meeting and it looks perfectly smart in this setting. The overall suit is comfortable enough to put on first thing in the morning drive to the dive site, wear all day and only take it off when you get back that evening.

My only criticisms of the suit were fed back to Fourth Element who have revised the design so that these problems are not present in the production version of the suit.