This is an extremely comfortable, well made suit. At $625 it’s at the premium end of the market, and it belongs there. It deserves recognition as a quality suit.

This wetsuit features a reverse, or breakaway, zipper, and these are slightly harder to get into than with standard, top-down zippers, but they’re immune from coming undone during the swim.

The ART is based on a theme that you’ll see more and more often in wetsuit design: stretch is good, but it’s not universally good, in all parts of the suit, all the time. You’ll find Aquaman, TYR, Aquasphere, and others all employing design strategies that limit the ductility of a suit, and this is largely due to the rubber getting more and more stretchy, more and more supple. If you’re a wetsuit maker, and you manufacture an entire suit out of Yamamoto #40 rubber, you’d better be very careful, or your Gumby suit is liable to balloon out during the swim, causing the swimmer to feel like the Michelin Man.

This suit does use Yamamoto’s floatable and stretchable #40, as well as #45, but only in certain panels. Much of the suit features what Aquaman calls “Compressed Dome Rubber,” which is lightweight, but not stretchy. This restricts the stretch panels to the areas where stretch is desired. Look a the pictures of this suit. You’ll see longitudinal strips sewed into the front of the suit, and these are examples of Compressed Dome Rubber interspersed strategically.

Note the heat-applied stretch restrictors in the TYR fullsuits written about elsewhere. Same general idea. When I write about Aquasphere’s wetsuits you’ll find they’ve got another way to make this same dog hunt.

Does all this work as advertised? The only way to know is to swim in the suit and report back what I sensed. So, swim in it I did.

The suit was very easy to get on. It pulls right up, and it seems to fulfil one of Aquaman’s stated objectives: To make a snug suit that does not balloon with water—that snug fit achieved without the need to stretch an overtight suit around your body. If this is not the most comfortable one-piece fullsuit on the market, it’s certainly on the short list.

I swam my three-set test, using the TYR Hurricane Category 5 as the control suit. Here’s how it came out:

3 sets of 4 x 100yd repeating on 1:30 base.

Set 1: Aquaman ART

1:11
1:11
1:11
1:12

Set 2: TYR Hurricane

1:10
1:11
1:11
1:11

Set 3: Aquaman ART

1:12
1:12
1:11
1:12

My guess, the Aquaman ART is, for me, about a half-second slower per 100 yards than the Hurricane CAT 5. Let me tell you why I think that might be.

While the ART is made for slim and trim athletes (the Compressed Dome Rubber panels almost make this unsuitable for “full figured” racers trying to stretch a #40 suit around their bodies), I am in fact very small in my wrist and ankle circumferences. I got a little bit of water up my wrists when pushing off the walls, which I must do at every turn. Also, a little water got up the legs during flip turns. Obviously, with the exception of one’s first dive in, or while dolphining out into the surf, this sort of thing is pool-specific. During normal open water swimming I’m not going to get any water up the wrists in this suit, and obviously not up the legs.

Furthermore, I’m 6’2” and 168lb right now. Here’s how the size chart runs for this suit:

L: 5’9” – 5’10”; 153lb – 168lb
XL: 5’10” – 6’; 169lb – 180lb

I swam in the XL, which was the right sized suit, because the L would have been too short in the torso. Keep in mind I’m slightly long in the torso, meaning the XL in the ART was almost to short in the torso as it is (for me). So, the XL was definitely the right size for me. If you consider that it’s slightly big for me, weight-wise, and that I’m small in my circumferences, it’s really a testament to this suit that it fit as well as it did.

If I was to pull a suit out for a leisurely open water workout with the posse, it’s very likely this is a suit I’d consider, because it’s so comfortable and easy to get on. However, if it’s possible to be in between sizes—even in a model that features a dozen or so sizes, which this one does, counting men’s and women’s—then I’m probably in between sizes in this suit.

Aquaman has done a great job with the ART. I’d love to take this suit out for a mile in the ocean and put it through its paces. It feels comfortable, warm, protective and safe. There’s no chest restriction, no abrasive hot spots, it almost falls off by itself in transition, and the only difficulty at all with this suit is in fiddling with the reverse zipper when donning the suit. Still, I tested this suit without any help, and for both sets I swam during this test I got the suit on, zipper included.