I always think it smacks of buck-passing when a reviewer says of a particular wetsuit, "It's just a matter of which one fits you best." But in the case of this wetsuit, those are words that come to mind.

The Predator is well made. It is constructed of 5mm Yamamoto #39 rubber, SCS-coated, down to 2mm rubber in the arms (so they say, but it seems to me they're using rubber even as thin as 1.5mm in the arms). The glueing and sewing is first-rate. The neck is well thought out, the suit doesn't leak, the seams aren't going to come apart. The arm, shoulder, and armpit panels have on their flip sides a particularly stretchy jersey: fabric which probably has approximately 300% stretch (the fabric will stretch to triple the length of its unstretched dimension). The zipper installation is extremely well done.

There is nothing I can say about this suit which is negative in any way. Except it didn't fit me very well. Let me be more precise. I am 6'2" tall, and I tried a size 8. This is a size bigger than the size I ought to have tried, judging by the size chart. But I'm taller than your average bear, and so thought I'd like the extra torso and extremity lengths. But I still found this suit quite short in the torso, which is to say that it pulled down on my shoulders quite a bit.

Back when I was in the wetsuit business, when I heard this I'd immediately suspect that the wearer just didn't pull the suit up tight enough into the crotch. But I know how to don a wetsuit and trust me, if it was up there any higher I'd have been able to hit a high-C. This suit is just not made -- in my opinion -- for tall fellers.

Fortunately, its arms are SO flexible that it was still fairly easy to overlook its torso shortness while swimming. But it also nagged me that my legs and arms weren't -- to my taste -- sufficiently covered with rubber. I don't see why some of today's wetsuit makers are so skimpy with rubber down the extremities. I rather like a long-armed, long-legged wetsuit to have long arms and long legs. Not three-quarters; not seven-eights; but the whole enchilada. This suit costs $380 American greenbacks. I want all $380 worth of rubber.

The Orca has this feature on its sleeves called, "AquaGrip™." The idea, I suppose, is to have a "paddling surface" on this suit. In my experiments with this sort of thing, such a feature actually serves to slow the suit down, because during the catch phase of the stroke these surface irregularities -- be they shark skin, mesh skin, ribs, whatever -- tend to trap air. So, when you start your pull, instead of pulling 100% water you're pulling a good bit of air. One of the basic tenets of swim technique is to shed your "pulling surface" -- hands and arms -- from all the air you can during the catch. I don't think this is a big issue, though, because the "fine mesh" Orca uses for this feature has surface indentations that are quite miniscule, and probably won't catch much air. So, while I'm pretty sure there's no extra grip, I doubt there's any measureable loss in stroke efficiency either.

In short, this is a hell of a wetsuit. But I think it would be a hellish wetsuit, if you're the wrong body type for it (but then you could say that about any wetsuit). I rather think that people under 6' tall would do better in sizes 8 and lower. It seems unlikely many people would have a problem with the suit being too long, either in the arms, legs, or torso. But I'd make sure it's not too short before I relegated myself to having this be my suit for the next few years. If it feels quite short in the torso, it probably is, and there are other suits in the market -- built for the particular torso girth that equates with the corresponding Orca size -- with longer torso and limb dimensions.

If I was 5'11", I'd love the Orca Predator so much I'd probably sleep with it on. It's that good. At 6'2", there's just not quite enough there there.