Billabong & Xcel Wetsuits

If you want to maximise your time in the water, no matter your choosen sport, surfing, wakeboarding, body boarding, windsurfing, kite boarding, kayaking, triathlons or just for swimming, then we have the right wetsuit for you. We stock the best wetsuit brands, including Billabong & Xcel. We have thinner wetsuits (3mm), ideal for summer, thicker wetsuits (5mm) ideal for winter and colder days. We also stock shortie wetsuits and steamer wetsuits, also know as full suits.

Wetsuit Size & Buying Guide

Wetsuits are baffling at the best of times, 543? Steamer? Flat Lock? Help!

A good wetsuit is one that fits your needs and budget. Some are designed to keep you warm in the sea during winter; others are made for messing about in lakes during the summer.

If you’re riding on a ringo behind a friend’s boat on a lake this summer you’ll only need a very basic wetsuit. If you’re going surfing in the UK in February you’ll need a very a high spec suit. If you’re a wakeboarder and you only ride in spring and summer you won’t need a winter wetsuit. So ask yourself, realistically when are you going to use this suit?

Wetsuits come in a range of thicknesses, the thicker the warmer, but the more restrictive your movement is. You want the thinnest suit you can get away with. Each wetsuit usually has it’s thickness in the product name, i.e. Billabong Foil 543, Billabong is the brand, Foil is the style name and 543, refers to the thickness.

• 5 = 5mm on the body
• 4 = 4mm on shoulders and lower back
• 3 = 3mm on arms and legs

You’ll of come across terms like "steamer" & the more obvious "shorty". This just refers to how much of your body is covered.

• Steamers = Covers your arms and legs
• Spring suit doesn’t cover your arms
• Shorty doesn’t cover you arms or legs

The wetsuit style you need depends on the conditions you’ll be using it in. A 202 Shorty will be fine for messing about in a lake in the summer, where you’re in and out of the water a lot. Any type of winter watersport activity you’ll need a steamer.

"Flat lock" "Chest zip" & "wrist and ankle gripper". What do they mean and what benefit are they? A wetsuit works by allowing a thin layer of water to get between you and your wetsuit, which heats up and keeps you warm. To stop fresh cold water getting into the suit and replacing the warm water (nobody needs that cold drip of water down their neck!) all the features you hear about on wetsuits make sure this doesn’t happen.

The key areas where cold water can get in are...

• Seams
• Cuffs & ankles
• Zips

The wetsuit industry is forever trying to come up with new ways to prevent that. "Flat lock" is a type of stitching used to prevent water getting in through the seams. It’s a tightly woven stitch, but still makes a hole in the wetsuit material (neoprene). The ideal seams are welded seams, as this stops any cold water getting in. Again depend on where you use it. Summer in a lake, you’re not going to need it.

Chest zips help by reducing the surface area of zip, which can let water in. Rather than a long zip down your back, there is just a short one on your chest.

Wrist & ankle grippers, reduce the amount of water or flush that goes up your arms and legs, essential if you’re in cold water.

There is a whole array of weird and wonderful wetsuit features out there, which is out of the scope of this guide. Just remember it’s worth having if it keeps cold water out.

Brand, is it important?

You can get a wetsuit from Tesco’s, great for a mess about in the lake. However if you want a pizza would you buy it from Billabong? Only if you had to. Brands like Billabong & Xcel invest a lot of time and money into making the best suits possible, as Tesco invest lots of time and money into making tasty and competitively priced pizzas.

"In summary a good wetsuit is one that fits your needs and keeps you in the water as long as you want to be."