INTRODUCTION

Going to the gym with your portable electronic device can be quite hazardous. You can either wear an arm strap (to the tightness of a blood pressure cuff) or a belt clip (how many have you broken in the last year), possible stick the unit in your workout pants, or set it on the stationary bike, and hope you remember it when you get up. SCOTTeVEST hopes to help reduce that fear and loathing with their Performance T-shirt. A TEC-enabled tee made of 3M’s Quick Dry™ fabric that comes in both a long and short-sleeve configuration. Did it turn out to be hot or cool? Read on for the review:

TAGS AND LABELS

As mentioned in the introduction, the SeV Performance T-shirt is made of 3M’s Quick Dry™ fabric (100% polyester). Scott sent us the long-sleeve version, which can be a risky venture with a long-armed reviewer such as myself. But we’ll come back to that later. First, I want to point out the tags (Figure 1). Yes, that can seem a bit boring, but with athletic wear, this can be a very important feature. Or rather, the lack of tags is important, the inclusion of tags that will inevitably begin to irritate your skin is a (tiny) negative. Sure, one could cut these out – but unless you are careful, you’ll either over cut (and get the shirt), or miss some of the tag and still have an issue. Hopefully, Scott will be able to address this with future revisions.

(all images link to higher resolution)

Figure 1: A close-up of the tags.

The embroidered SeV logo on the back of the tee is small, discrete and blends in well with the rest of the fabric (Figure 2). So well, that most folks won’t even see it.

Figure 2: The small, but tasteful SeV logo on the back.

TEC-Y

Similar to the SeV T-shirt, the Performance version has a single pocket found near the upper left shoulder, closed this time with just a zipper (no magnets). The pull is long and wide, which makes getting bits in and out of it a very easy task (Figure 3).

Figure 3: The now standard SeV zipper pull.

With only one pocket, we only have one TEC access point (Figure 4). The pocket itself is large, and with the weight management system, most objects will fit comfortably into the gap between ones arm and body.

Figure 4: Close-up of the only TEC access on the Performance T-shirt

PUT ‘ER ON

Sleeve length was more than acceptable, as is the great quality stitching on the tee as a whole (Figure 5). Since the shirt is 100% polyester, I didn’t need to worry about shrinkage either. The slick feel of the fabric is comfortable, and also makes it easy to slide under another shirt without bunching up.

Figure 5: A closer look at the sleeve end (and my hand).

Loading the Performance T-shirt up with my Zen Vision:M, a visible bulge appeared (Figure 6 and 7). Smaller devices were able to hide more efficiently. But with my arm at my side, just about every electronic device had some bulging. But if you were wearing this under another shirt, you wouldn’t really notice the effect at all. I’m sure that we’ll see improvements with this pocket as Scott further refines the product line.

Figure 6: Some bulging is apparent with arm outstretched.

Figure 7: More bulging with arm down.

In heavy workout testing mode, the shirt performed wonderfully, wicking away the moisture from my skin to the surface of the shirt where it could be more readily evaporated. Even with a second long sleeve over the top, the ‘performance’ of this Performance T-shirt was exactly as I expected – outstanding. Be assured that I’ll be wearing one of these beneath my PAX Enforcer shirt this year.

Figure 7: A front shot of the SeV Performance T-shirt, loaded.

PURCHASING

You can purchase SCOTTeVEST’s Performance T-shirt here for $34.99 (long sleeve) and $29.99 (short sleeve).

PROS

• Moisture wicking
• TEC-enabled
• Comfortable

CONS

• Larger devices will cause the pocket to bulge
• Interior isn’t tagless

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

SCOTTeVEST’s Performance T-shirt does just that – perform. Yes, we could do without the tags, the the pocket could use a little tweaking, but so far as I’ve seen, SeV is the first to have this sort of pocket technology built into a moisture-wicking style shirt. I anticipate getting a lot of use out of this shirt during the upcoming PAX, and even more during my gym visits. That said, we give SCOTTeVEST’s Performance T-shirt the following score:

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