By: René Petterson
For: Open water life
Through a long diving career and many years in the diving industry, I have eventually tried a lot of the "new things" that have come on the market. This is one of the great and pleasant advantages of being an active part of the industry, "you get to try all the new toys".
I remember well back when the predecessor Halo3D came on the market and caused a great stir with its futuristic "SpaceTek" panels and its unusual appearance. Fourth Element has always been at the forefront of the market when it comes to using new and forward-thinking materials to create some of the best vams money can buy.
I saw the Halo A°R for the first time at a diving fair just before Covid hit. I remember being a little skeptical about it, primarily because it didn't look like everything else. The zipper had been moved to the side and it was made of materials I had never heard of. On top of this, it felt like a 200g classic vams when you put it on. I left the stand and thought to myself "Have they flopped a product here?".
The pandemic affected the production of diving equipment in line with everything else and it would still be a few years before the product came on the market and could be test dived. Fast forward to Spring/Summer 2022 and here it was. After talking to Fourth Element about the Halo AR, I was prepared for it to be thin and mobile. I experience as a diver that I freeze easily and have always prioritized good wams, usually at the expense of good mobility. If you first try a product in the middle of the year with a water temperature of 11 degrees, you can't have a miracle to get a representative test. I put the Fourth Element J2 under the Halo A°R and did a one-hour sport dive in a Bare X-mission suit.
When putting them on, I quickly discover that there has been a focus on good ergonomics in the production of Halo A°R, wide foot loops with insulation all the way around the heel and integrated wrist warmers are some of the features that stand out. Personally, I find the Halo A°R a bit "strange" to put on the first time due to the position of the zip. You have to think a little in the same way as when you put on a front-zip shell suit so that it doesn't become a "separate dance" to put it on for the first time. The integrated wrist warmers make using the ring system a whole lot easier, I have Rolock 90 on my suit and have experienced that large wads have sometimes come into conflict with the ring system and made it a bit challenging to fit the dry gloves. This problem is almost gone with HaloAR.
When paired, the Halo A°R felt different from the vamp I'm used to using. The cold creeps in in a completely different way and I must admit that I thought to myself "this is going to be a cold dive" the first minute after I entered the water. After you have acclimatised to the temperature difference between the surface and the water, the effect of the technical materials begins to be felt. "It never got cold!" the wamsen has good mobility and tasks such as putting on flippers on the surface or crane drills went completely painless without the wamsen restricting any movement. Here, the right size will be the key to good comfort and it pays to either try the wam on or take some measurements and study the size chart carefully before buying.
10 dives later, I'm still impressed that the Halo A°R can offer so much insulation with such a low bulk mass, and imagine that with 2 layers underneath, this wam will do the job for me even on winter dives up to two hours, preferably combined with a heating vest. Personally, I would buy the wams slightly larger so that there is room for, for example, a J2 and a Xerotherm underneath, possibly a Xerotherm and an X-core vest. These are my personal opinions and we all who dive know that isolation is very individual.
Halo A°R appears to the very highest degree as a premium product and here one invests in the technology and sustainability of the latest in technical materials and development.
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