Watch: Stab’s Best Wetsuits Of 2024

Magic can be born slowly, over the course of iterations. 

You don’t have to wind the clock back too many years to arrive at a point in which a 4-millimeter wetsuit felt like a straight jacket and kept you warm only if you stayed busy in it. 

These days, a 4 mil allows you not just to survive in cold water, but to thrive in it — even when thriving means occasionally landing an unimpressive air. You can also surf for a very long time without the shivers creeping in. 

Just imagine if you’d rolled out one of today’s top suits 15 years ago. You’d have been accused of violating the laws of the universe and maybe even been nominated for a SIMA award. 

Which brings us here. As is tradition, Stab’s Best Wetsuits test will sample a niche surf shop’s worth of neoprene to assess different iterations from various brands. 

This year’s test pilots are me and Laura Crane, who has two functioning eyes and is generally excellent. Laura grew up riding for Billabong and stealing trophies from other British surfers. Over the last few years, her professional surfing career got sidelined for a more mainstream career in modeling. But, recently, Laura decided it was time to focus on surfing again — particularly in big waves. She’s been charging Nazaré and a naughty slab in Galicia. And she’s doing it for the love of the game, not to please sponsors or any such thing. 

Respek.

Laura and I tested 130 mm of neoprene in total. The suits were 4mm, and the boots were 3mm. If you’re curious and/or want to accuse me of being bad at math in the comments, that’s eight men’s and women’s suits [64mm], three additional men’s suits [16], and nine pairs of booties [54]. Nailed it, yeah?

This year, we tested suits from Rip Curl, Ion, Manera, Orca, Mystic, Feral, Patagonia, O’Neill, Colby+ (men’s only), Adelio (men’s only), and Body Glove (men’s only). We also tested booties from most of the brands above and from Vans and Solite. 

And the venue? Portgual, of course. The meteorological conditions made our job…interesting. There was swell. But there was also wind, and rain. If you’re willing to drive, the Portuguese coastline has nooks and crannies that make it possible to find a decent wave nearly 365 days of the year. No swell? Go to Nazaré. Too much swell and bad winds? Go to the Algarve. 

We did both, and we broke a car down in doing so. 

Now, the actual test. Stab’s annual reader survey tells us that your top wetsuit priorities are comfort, warmth, and flexibility (in that order). So, that’s what Laura and I paid attention to. We kept score for each attribute on each suit, but we had a hard time rating anything under an 8. Straight up, all of these are great wetsuits — but a few of them stood out from the pack for different reasons. In the end, Laura and I each selected two finalists. We took the finalists for an ice bath, then one last surf to compare them head-to-head.

We were both confident in the winners. And, to be honest, it was pretty clear from the moment we put them on.