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Drysuit Choices - Santi Enduro & BZ400

4K views 3 replies 2 participants last post by  copperband 
#1 ·
I posted this on DIRx but thought I would stick it on here too just for anybody who doesn't use DIRx...

I am posting this (lengthy) review as there is lots on here about various drysuits but very little about the Santi Enduro, which I think is often dismissed quickly but after recently picking one up second had I feel they are worth consideration as a option for anybody in the market for a new drysuit.

After struggling to do shutdowns and suffering with floaty feet and all sorts of other little niggles like a poorly placed dump valve I recently decided that I wanted to change my Otter Britannic drysuit for something more DIR-focused. Now, the options seem endless depending on the depth of your pockets and I did a lot of research on internet forums, websites and also speaking to people and finally try-diving a few different suits. It was at this time that I really began to understand what I wanted from a 'DIR' drysuit. I really wanted a DUI TLS 350 Explorer, but unfortunately funds would not stretch to the £2k+ price tag. I tried one of these suits in size Medium with Rich Walker and it was like a second skin and just fantastic to dive, but alas outside my budget for a little while yet. I missed a couple of decent second-had ones in the right size and so started looking around.

I looked at the Ursuit Heavy-Light, the Polar Bears Explorer, the Gates/Hunter VSN-1100 and the Santi Espace, which for somewhere between £700-£1100 all seemed a decent alternative to a DUI, but I kept coming back to the Seaskin Nova due simply to the rave-reviews that they are getting at the moment. I priced up the options that I wanted and the suit was weighing in around the £600 mark. I also started looking at decent undersuits and I settled on the Santi BZ400 following a great deal of positive information about both the fit and performance of the suits.

I decided to sell my Otter and put the funds towards a new Seaskin Nova MTM suit and then save up for a Santi BZ400 to finish the ensemble. I had a couple of bouts of bad luck selling the Otter; a couple of time wasters and a leaky boot put me back a few months and I am ultimately glad that this happened because one evening while I was browsing good old eBay I stumbled on a size Medium Santi Enduro drysuit and BZ400 undersuit which was going together as a package for a decent price. I contacted the seller and found out that the suit was 2 years old, having not been dived since August 2009 and only ever having done 15 dives from new. I checked the sizing with the seller and I was 99% certain that it would fit me. I forgot to bid on the suit (Durr) but then to my great delight found that nobody had bid on it and it was re-listed for the princely sum of £350. I watched it again, and as my Otter was still yet to sell I again didn't bid and the suit went unsold yet again. I contacted the seller and confirmed sizes for a final time, getting some photos to check the suits out in detail and then agreed a private sale for both of the suits, complete with the original bag, hood and drysuit hose!

After a whole 18 hours the suit arrived courtesy of Royal Mail Special Delivery! I was like a kid at Christmas opening the box, where I found that the seller had not been lying when he said the suit was in very good condition! There was literally no wear on the suit at all, the seals were perfect and the fabric of the suit was pretty much unmarked. The single only fault was that the heat-transfer 'Santi' and 'Enduro' badges on the arms had begun peeling which I understand is a regular issue with the stickers anyway.

I tried the BZ400 undersuit for fit and I must admit that I don't think that it could fit any better if it had been MTM for me originally. The fit around the waist is snug but not tight or restrictive, the legs are again snug with no excess fabric but still fully flexible. The torso felt a little loose initially, but once zipped up there is no excess material and the minimal additional room is to enable the arms of the suit to flex, the fit and mobility is just superb.

The drysuit is made from an extremely heavy weight 600gsm Cordura which I appreciate would not be to everybody's taste. Apparently it is thicker than a CLX450 but to be honest it seems about the same flexibility. The fabric looks heavier than my Britannic, but the suit is actually more flexible than the Otter suit because the seams are all sewn and glued flat rather than folded, glued and stitched like the Otter. I tried the suit on with the undersuit and the fit is again incredible. The suit doesn't feel restrictive anywhere, the telescopic torso removes any tightness in the groin when reaching behind your head and the flexibility is superb considering how thick the fabric of the suit it. The suit has soft 6mm neoprene boots (not Flexsoles) which are actually very similar in function to a DUI Turbosole. The boots are soft and compress underwater so you don't get floaty feet but the shoe of the boot is rubberized so you still have protection while walking about.

I took the suit to Capernwray on Friday last week to try it out and see where I was with weighting etc. We did two dives of around 50 min down to around 16m just to check out buoyancy, ascents and the general fit of the suit.

I was using my standard rig of faber 12L manifolded doubles, Agir Niord 44 wing, Agir 6mm BP and Halcyon Explorer 9/21w canister light. This is the same rig that I have dived with my Otter drysuit and Whites undersuit for about 6 months. I started with a fill of 220 bar and at the end of the dive I had 110 bar remaining, I felt light on ascent and could feel air sloshing around inside the suit as I ascended slowly. We made our way to a 6m platform and used the buoy line for a safe slow ascent. I thought I was underweighted due to the BZ400 undersuit being more buoyant than my old layered suit system. The BZ400 is toasty warm, the water was 18 degrees but underwater the suit was not too warm at all; it was just perfect to be honest. I always thought that I was warm and comfortable in my old suit but you never realise what being truly warm underwater feels like until you actually experience it, imagine that red-sea comfort and you are somewhere near the BZ400!

After the first dive I had to loosen my OPH by about an inch as I couldn't get anywhere near my valves on the first dive, despite doing the inflated-suit superman impression before descent and trying every trick in the book during the dive, like heads down position, lying flat on a training platform etc. Thinking that I was underweighted with the BZ400 I added a 2Kg tail weight for the second dive.

After a decent SI we jumped in and again did about 50 min at 16m, this time I tried a bit less air in the suit during the dive and on ascent I had no issues at all. I really eeked out the gas on the 6m shelf trying shutdowns and playing with SMB deployment so that I had about 30 bar showing at the end of the dive in order to perform a proper weight check.

I then did a weight check, I descended like a brick even with only 30 bar in the twins! I removed the 2kg tail weight and tried again and I was able to descend easily and comfortably hold a 3m stop. It occurred to me that the Apeks dump valve had been sitting unused for 12 months and may have been sticking on the first dive!

Overall impressions of the Enduro is that the suit has fantastic build quality and has been really well thought out. The crotch strap is far more substantial than other brands and the Y-shaped elastic is really comfortable to wear. The internal bracers have a really useful front pocket so you can lock your car and stash your key while fully suited up and then just close the dry zip the last few inches before diving. The suit looks extremely tough and heavy duty, it weighs 5kg on my suitcase scales so you wouldn't want to travel by air with it but for the kind of diving I do in the UK it will be perfect. It is superbly flexible and does not in any way restrict movement, despite the weight of the fabric, which goes to show its not the fabric but the cut of the suit that matters. The dump valve is optimally placed on the outside of the left arm but the Apeks valve is definitely slower to dump than the Sitech on my Otter. I have removed the valve and rinsed it through with warm water and I will give it another go in freshwater before trying it in the sea at the end of the month in Portland. If it still sticks it's getting replaced with a Sitech as they are brilliant.

The BZ400 was awesome. Its quite thick (but not as thick as I was expecting TBH) and superbly warm, probably too warm for the 18 degree water in Capers! What I did like was that you can run the suit very tight with minimal air but the suit remains toasty warm and the squeeze is not uncomfortable at all due to the BZ400 not compressing so much. The little design features like articulated knees, shoulders and elbows really add to the flexibility and the internal bracers inside the undersuit (yes-bracers in an undersuit!) really helped to stop the crotch dropping and causing mobility issues with the legs which I have always suffered with my whites undersuit.

As a package the Enduro and BZ400 really are spot on.

I am chuffed to bits with my new (used) Santi Enduro and BZ400, it ticks all of the boxes that I wanted for fit, flexibility and performance and better still the price second hand was just quite simply a bargain!

If you are looking at a new drysuit for UK diving, don't dismiss the Enduro just because people say it will be too thick. I disagree now that I have dived one, the suit may be heavy but its durable and is still very flexible.
 
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#3 ·
I looked in a lot of detail at loads of suits, the shortlist came down to the Seaskin Nova, the PB Explorer, the Ursuit heavy-light and the Santi Espace. The Ursuit and the Santi were at the top of the price list, both would have cost between £1000-£1200 with options etc, and the Seaskin and PB were similar on price, the deciding factor was for me that I wanted to be factory or representative measured for a MTM to ensure the fit and I can get to the Seaskin factory a lot easier than the PB factory and that was it really!

I think that the basic underlining principle with any of the suits I shortlisted is that the cut is good and to get a good suit you need to ensure you either get measured correctly or buy the correct off-the-peg size as fit is vital to performance. There are lots of other suits that I looked at like Predator, Otter (Travelite), the Nortek Discovery and several others I can't remember...

I seem to have landed really lucky with my Santi, TBH it was a gamble but thankfully it seems to have paid off! I would never have gone for an Enduro normally as the fabric is so heavy, I had got myself sort of obsessed with lightweight fabric and had discounted heavier weight suits on that basis.

When I bought the Santi I was thinking along the lines that it was worth it for the BZ400 undersuit, and that I would use the Enduro for the winter and then sell it for a couple of hundred quid and get a new MTM, but now that I have tried it I am so impressed that I'm not in any rush to change suits again for the foreseeable future. If I do have a new suit in the future or start using a drysuit abroad I will probably keep the Enduro as a spare and get a MTM Santi Espace now that I have seen the quality of their suits!

My future plans for the short term will be to get some rolocks attached and in the longer term sitech wrist rings and maybe even the sitech neck seal rings...

I hope you are pleased with your Explorer, if what I have read about them is true and the fit is right you will be getting a good suit!
 
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