be aware that their prices are no better than DUIs, unless you need a custom cut.
I heard this a lot - that DUI is just way too damn expensive for what you get. Well, that may be true for their "special production" suits (note - DUI does NOT make a truly custom suit - they take your measurements and match that against a set of stock pattern sizes for the various parts of the suit to come up with a "best fit"), but it defniitely is not for their stock, rack-size suits.
When you look at the other premium-quality suits, DUI's rack stuff is pretty reasonable in price. They're neither the cheapest nor most expensive. The quotes I received on Andys, Diving Concepts, Pinnacle and a handful of others were all in the same general range as DUI, with several of them significantly MORE expensive at the actual final price to me, the consumer, than the DUI was.
A big part of this is that many of the other brands are not discounted at all, but the shops also don't carry any stock!
And every single one of these "other vendors" representatives (the shops) tried the line that their suits were "more economical" compared to DUI.
Huh? Pinnacle's and Diving Concept's offerings, all up, were significantly (by $200 up to $700!) MORE expensive than the DUI stock suits (TLS350/CLX450/CF200 lines) for equivalent material choices.
Oh sure, there were cheaper suits from all these lines, but then again DUI has that too in the "SE" series of suits - the savings being, primarily, a back zip rather than over-the-shoulder.
The problem with back zips is that they can restrict movement of the arms and shoulders, they're easily damaged if you do not have a zip cover (and few entry-level suits do) by your harness and, of course, they really ought to be operated by someone other than the wearer, lest you catch something in them or put a lateral stress on them and screw 'em up. They ARE, however, much cheaper than the longer over-the-shoulder design.
Where DUI does screw you is with things like accessory pockets. The solution to that is to not buy them from DUI; FifthD has nice bellows pockets for cheap ($30) and you can glue them on yourself, or if you can deal with the possible laughter from dive buddies, get a pair of their "shorts" with the attached pockets and leave the suit alone. Ditto for things like a pee valve - put in your own. DUI seems to think that $120 is a reasonable price for a pocket. I think the Longs have had too many hits off the crack pipe on the accessories.
But their stock size suits are a pretty decent value for what you get, and frankly, other than a pee valve (for men of course) what else do you really need from them? Besides, if you want pockets on the suit, would you not want to put the suit on and then place them yourself so you know that you can get to everything inside and they're where you want them? Not possible if you have it done at the factory.
