Description
We make ordering an Elios Smoothskin Freediving Wetsuit Easy!
We totally understand why you would want to order a custom made Elios smoothskin wetsuit! For an extra 40 or 50usd, you have yourself a beautiful, durable and wonderful looking custom made wetsuits that always fit better than an off-the-shelve wetsuit.
The freediving wetsuits are attractively priced, look good, and will last you for years, but first, you need to order one… And this is where the problems start – especially for beginner freedivers or first-time buyers.
We bought our first Elios wetsuit in 2011, and with over 10 years of experience, we know what is needed and what is not. Now we cut out the fluff, make things simpler, and make it understandable. We have made ordering a custom made freediving wetsuit easier than ever!
You can now order your custom made smoothskin freediving wetsuit in 5 steps.
Select the thickness of your freediving wetsuit.
Select the outside colour of your wetsuit.
Select which type of inside you want for your wetsuit.
Order your wetsuit here on this page.
Measure your sizes, and send them to us via our Elios sizes form or filled in pdf. (links open in a new tab)
And then wait for 6 to 8 weeks (includes production and shipping time) and take your brand new smoothskin wetsuit for a dive!
Why should you order a tailor-made freediving wetsuit from Elios Sub?
Elios Sub is an Italian wetsuit company based in Cattolica, Northern Italy. They have been producing scuba, freediving and snorkelling wetsuits and many many many custom made wetsuits since 1977. Elios Sub is probably the #1 producer and most well-known brand for custom or tailor-made freediving wetsuits. However, their off-the-shelves freediving wetsuits are also very popular with dive centers and retail shops. Besides the custom made freediving wetsuits, Elios also has a solid presence in the spearfishing and scuba wetsuit market. Elios Sub is internationally acknowledged for its high-quality products that come at a very competitive price. Elios Sub is often considered the #1 reference point by many of the rival manufacturers.
All Elios Sub wetsuits have one thing in common: the basic material, named Expanded Cellular Neoprene. This Neoprene is a synthetic rubber with exceptional chemical-physical characteristics of being soft, elastic and resistant to salt, ozone and ultraviolet rays.
But because all divers have different needs, Elios Sub developed different kinds of wetsuits by selecting different specifications depending on your needs, all based on giving satisfaction from beginner to professional, free divers.
How to go about and which Elios Sub wetsuit to select?!
Whether you are buying your first, second or tenth Elios wetsuit, selecting and ordering can be quite frustrating. When you ask for the available options, you will get a list back with about 25 different options to choose from, and this, of course, will be overwhelming to all buyers. Additionally, more experienced buyers know that email communication can be somewhat difficult and then you have to wait for the payment confirmations, which can be a slow process too. Because we love the Elios suits ourselves – check our Facebook and or Instagram page, and you’ll see we are all wearing custom Elios Freediving wetsuits ourselves. Now many years ago, we contacted Elios Sub and asked them if we could sell the freediving wetsuits ourselves for the same price level as they do, but only now with an easier 5-step order process and an automated payment process.
We’ve cut through the clutter to make it easier for first-time buyers. The Freedive Academy selected the #1 freediving suit that every instructor, semi-professional, and athletic freediver wears or ends up wearing Elios Smoothskin or Superskin Wetsuit. The Elios Smoothskin or Superskin wetsuit is the single most recommended wetsuit, has been proven for high performance and is tested by many freediving professionals. But even though we selected their best wetsuit for you, there are still a few things you need to think of.
What exactly is a Smoothskin or Superskin freediving wetsuit?
First, some definitions of the terms to help us understand how to choose the right Elios wetsuit. We’ll start on the outside of the wetsuit with the coating, followed by the materials and the inside of the suit.
Nano Superskin Outside
After years of developing freediving wetsuits, Elios Sub created this new and heavily improved pure freediving wetsuit. All its features and properties are enhanced to improve your performance by using the high-quality Japanese neoprene called Yamamoto Type 45 with an SCS Nano coating.
Why use Yamamoto 45?
Yamamoto is a Japanese material manufacturer producing innovative, high-performance, rubber-based materials with applications in professional sports, health and wellness, aerospace and apparel, and many other fields. Over the years, Yamamoto became the go-to material for top-level freedivers.
Yamamoto 45 is their top line in a long list of neoprene products. Compared to, for example, Yamamoto 39, Yamamoto 45 is slightly more buoyant, softer and offers greater elasticity. At the same time, it maintains a strong resistance to tears, and this keeps it that Yamamoto 45 wetsuits are very easy and comfortable to wear – and easy to put on either dry or wet.
The new Yamamoto 45 Nano generation with their new chemical formula has a much higher resistance to compression – the pressure at depth diving, and therefore it maintains its special features: extra-stretchy, extra-comfortable and extra-warm.
Super Composite Skin (SCS) Nano
This SCS Nano is the most hydrodynamic and durable wetsuit coating available. For comparison, regular neoprene has an underwater coefficient of dynamic friction of 4, where SCS Nano has 0.026. Using the SCS coating can easily make a decent dive time for -100meter up to 20 seconds shorter. There is currently no better hydrodynamics solution than the SCS Nano coating.
What means hydrodynamics in freediving wetsuits?
Simply said, hydrodynamics are the forces or motions of water against your body. There are two things to consider when choosing your wetsuit with the most hydrodynamics properties for freediving.
1. Less underwater friction.
The Elios Super Composite Skin (SCS) Nano wetsuits are specifically designed to improve the outside ultra smoothskin special hydrodynamic features. Simply said, this means that the rubber surface of the wetsuit is super slippery. This special slipperiness ensures a ‘smoother’ descent and ascends speed. Less friction and less drag in the water will mean higher speeds with less energy consumption.
2. Reducing contact area for high performance.
The most prominent feature of SCS is that it reduces the contact area to the skin. Thus, the resistance of surface friction can be reduced when it is dry and wet. As a result of the reduced contact area with the new Elios wetsuits, the surface friction resistance can be reduced to 0.28 when dry and 0.025 when the suit is submerged. This is an immediate reduction of seconds on your dive time. This improvement is remarkable, especially when looking at the actual diving time.
This is also why we always recommend buying a custom made or tailor-made wetsuit. When measuring your own sizes, the suit will always fit better around the body and thus creates less drag than an off-the-shelve suit.
Time to order your Elios Custom Freediving Wetsuit!
You now know why we recommend the craftsmanship of Elios Sub and why we like their Yamamoto 45 Smoothskin wetsuits. It is now time to order yours in 5 simple steps.
Step 1: Select the thickness of your freediving wetsuit.
The Elios freediving wetsuits come in 4 different sizes – at least the wetsuits we sell. The smooth skin freediving suits are available in 1,5mm, 3, 5 and 7mm thick. To determine your thickness, you need to check or ask yourself two questions;
- What is the water temperature of the water I’m diving in?
- How fast will I get cold?
Please note, there is no global standard in water temperature versus wetsuit thickness. It’s simple, some people prefer thicker wetsuits, and some people prefer thinner wetsuits or even rashguards. Instead of mentioning the thicknesses and degrees, we made the below recommendations based on our own +10 years of freediving experience of diving worldwide in different types of water and different water temperatures.
3mm wetsuit thickness
The 3mm wetsuits are the ones we sell most. They are used year-round throughout Asia and the Caribbean and can be used in the Egyptian and Mediterranean summers. In Asia or Caribbean summers, the 3mm can be replaced by a 2mm, but if you are training for longer periods of time, we recommend buying a 3mm. In our dive center in the Philipines, we use 3mm wetsuits for our customer rental suits year-round, and this works absolutely fine, and we never had any problems with this.
5mm wetsuit thickness
The 5mm wetsuits are used in Northern and South American waters, the European and in the winter in Egypt or the Mediterranean. If, for example, you travel to Dahab, Egypt, in October or November, you would definitely need a 5mm wetsuit.
7mm wetsuit thickness
Only the truly brave freedivers would need a 7mm wetsuit. A 7mm wetsuit is for those venturing out in Canada, Northern Europe or Russia. If you go out on a trip to freedive with orcas in Norway, you need a 7mm wetsuit.
1,5mm (or 2mm) wetsuit thickness
These thinner suits are usually only used by competitive freedivers who want their suit to be as thin as possible. Thinner means less buoyant, and these super-thin suits feel like a second skin. Besides competitive freedivers, you will also see them in some Asian waters, like with us in the Philippines during summer.
If you are not sure which thickness you would need, please feel free to contact us anytime.
Step 2: Select the outside colour of your wetsuit.
This step should be an easy one. The Yamamoto 45 wetsuits are available in the following colours; Dark Grey, Black, Green, Red, Blue, Silver, Purple and Gold. Almost all colours are available at any time – or at least in backorder. If a colour is not available, we’ll email you the available options.
Step 3: Select which type of inside you want for your wetsuit.
We have two options for the inside of the freediving wetsuits, and the differences between them are great.
Type 1: Superelastic nylon lining inside
This is the type of wetsuit usually preferred by freediving professionals and instructors. The Superelastic lining is a 500% stretch nylon to use only on the inside. Freedivers of all levels can use the additional feature of Superelastic lining on the inside. The wetsuits are much easier to wear, stronger and more resistant to tears than the open cell inside.
Type 2: Open cell inside
Open cell wetsuits are highly recommended for freediving professionals and athletes since they are more elastic, warm and fit like a second skin. This inside is a porous neoprene layer without any coating, paint or extra cover. And because it’s porous, the open cells/microscopic bubbles attach to the skin by creating a vacuum and therefore, the suits usually fit like a second skin. Unfortunately, this advantage also makes the wetsuit much more fragile than the nylon lined insider. Plus, if you want to wear this suit, you definitely need water and soap to put it on. The nylon inside suits generally has a much longer lifespan than the open cell inside.
Step 4: Order your wetsuit here on this page.
Now that you know what kind of wetsuit you want – and need, it’s time to order your new custom made freediving wetsuit. The order process is easy, convenient and painless.
At the top of this page, you select the thickness, the colour and the preferred inside of your new freediving wetsuit.
You click on the ‘Add to Cart’ and go to the checkout page.
Here you fill in your contact information, the delivery address – shipping costs is for most regions $60, and you select your payment option. We accept Paypal and Credit Card and bank transfer to our Dutch and Philippine bank, wechat and alipay. Here you will find an overview of our payment options. If you prefer to pay via Wechat or Alipay, please contact us since this is not possible directly via the website.
Once the order is placed, and the payment has been received, we’ll immediately send you a payment confirmation.
Step 5: Measure your sizes and send them to us.
All our freediving wetsuits are custom or tailor-made – all bodies are slightly different, and in a sport, as freediving, you need good quality gear to enhance your performance. We do have some standard-size wetsuits in stock, and we always compare sizes; if the dimensions are nearly identical, we will contact you and make a proposal for a discounted suit. Usually, the refund will be something like 25Euro or about $40, which is in our opinion not enough NOT to choose for a tailor-made wetsuit. But if we can save you some money, we will message you.
To create the perfect cut, we need 16 different measurements. This will result in an anatomic cut that is NOT pre-formed as most wetsuit manufacturers do, but this anatomic cut improves the close-fit for movements during diving. These 16 measurements will add on for an extremely streamlined design to further improve the hydrodynamics of the suit.
Measure your sizes, and send them to us via our Elios sizes form or filled in pdf. (links open in a new tab)
The Elios Smoothskin freediving wetsuit will make you feel more comfortable underwater. The suits will make you better streamlined and more hydrodynamic, saving you much precious energy and oxygen.
The Elios Super Composite Skin (SCS) Nano Superskin outside and Superelastic lining or Open-cell inside are designed with modern materials to keep you stress-free from any pressure of the wetsuit. And at the same time, the suit keeps you safe from the elements, ocean wildlife and helps you to maintain your body warmth.
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