ZION Wetsuits is one of the new cool wetsuit brand out there, hailing from Australia, and being “The Brainchild of former pro Bodyboarder Ryan Mattick”, who “has developed Zion for purpose built Bodyboard use in mind”. There are quite a lot of bodyboarding-specialized wetsuits brands nowadays which is great (Agent 18, Dunes, Zion, Reeflex, Void…). We tested an AGENT 18 Wetsuit last year, then a DUNES steamer, and now it’s ZION’s turn to be tested by Spongercity. We’ll make the test/review short and to the point:
We tested a really nice black & blue ZION Flux 3/2 steamer in cool water temp during the last few weeks.
Zion paid attention to details and the suit looks absolutely amazing with nice superstrech neoprene (or “chloroprene” which is limestone-based Yamamoto Japanese neoprene), nice colors combos, sick screenprinted logos, nice colored stitches/seams and well cut panels.
The suit is really confortable, really soft, really flexible and awesomely stretchy. The stitches/seams are well adjusted and the suit is ergonomic. The asymetric rear barrier inside the suit and behind the backzip (to stop water) is the only weird stuff on the suit, it’s very useful but the right side of it has a sort of rounded hole that goes on your shoulder which is not really useful. We eventually put our arm thru it the first time we tried the suit, almost tearing appart the barrier flap and didn’t understand what happened until we realised we put our arm in that weird hole. Anyway, that’s a detail…
In the water the suit is super flexy and confortable, it’s warm, the backzip + neoprene rear barrier combo doesn’t seem to let the water get in and the collar works well. The collar velcro could have offering a longer velcro area to make the collar tighter, it’s a little wide for small necks maybe.
The suit does let the water get inside thru some of the seams. The Flux model is a GBS suit with critically taped and heat-taped entry points but the water still gets in thru some of the seams unlike a perfectly GBS’ed suit. It’s not a suit designed for super cold temperatures since it’s a 3/2 so it didn’t bother us too much. It looks like the Hi-End model from ZION called the Trinity will not let the water go in from what we’ve read. The FLux is the middle-range it seems.
There’s only one very annoying thing with the Flux suit actually: the velcro system from the neck closure will destroy the whole inside of your Flux suit jersey thing in no time if you don’t pay attention to it. The velcro always tries to stick itself to the inside of the suit (which is a quite soft grey jersey material) and will absolutely destroy it when you try to un-velcro it. It’s such a bummer.
Other than those two issues (slight water entry thru some of the seams and aggressive velcro) the suit is super duper confortable, soft and cool. We’re keeping ours for sure, it’s really nice, flexy and warm. Almost a perfect suit for cool waters. We wish ZION had made a ziperless suit with no velcro though. Maybe next season ? With a little chest zip ?
FLUX series features:
- 3/2mm
- 100% limestone-based Yamamoto Japanese superstretch chloroprene (not neoprene)
- Anatomically engineered, to ensure super snug fit
- Silk-touch nylon external jersey
- Japanese hollow fibre internal jersey for comfort, warmth and added durability
- GBS, critically taped and heat-taped entry points
- Asymmetric rear barrier system
- Embossed highly durable kneepads
- Glideskin collar
