Sea to Summit Drylite Towel Review + Unboxing

In this video, we’ll be looking at the Sea
to Summit Drylite towel,
which is 1 of the 10 best camping
towels that I review on this channel.
I’ll be unboxing and testing the Drylite
towel against dirt, sand and seawater.
I will also give you a breakdown of its
key features, such as absorbency, quick
drying abilities, material and more.
Let’s get right into it.
Here’s the Sea to Summit Drylite towel
from Amazon. I bought the Small, Medium,
Large and Extra Large sizes and here’s
how much I paid for each one.
The main towel that I’ll
be testing is the Large,
which I paid $25 for.
And with that, let’s get into the unboxing.
So what do you get when you buy a Sea
to Summit Drylite towel?
You get a storage pouch, the towel,
and an instruction manual right here.
Here are the Drylite towel’s official specs
from Sea to Summit.
These differed from my personal
measurements by about 4-5%,
and I’ll give you those right now.
Length, 46 inches, or 117 cm.
Width, 23 inches, or 58 cm.
Weight of towel, 5.3 ounces, or 151 grams.
Storage pouch, 0.35 ounces,
or 10 grams.
Packed size, 6.5 by 6 by 1.5 inches,
16.5 by 15

/> by 4 cm.
The Drylite towel is made of 70%
polyester and 30% polyamide,
which is nylon, and is made in China.
The Sea to Summit Drylite towel has
a hanging loop, so you can hang your towel
on a hook at home,
on a clothesline in the outdoors or
even on your pack when you’re hiking.
You can also just hang it to dry
on a tree without the loop.
For additional convenience,
it is machine washable, though
you might want to be careful about the
colors running, which I’ll explain later.
As for the storage pouch,
the front is mesh for ventilation,
while the back is made of
a lightweight material.
The Drylite towel is also marketed
to be fast drying and super absorbent.
Is it though? Let’s test it to find out!
To test absorbency, I measured the amount
of water in this bucket,
soaked the Drylite towel and measured
whatever water was left.
So essentially, the Drylite towel absorbed
450mL of water.
As it weighs 151 grams,
total absorbency is
450 divided by 151,
which is about 3 times.
I also performed
the same test on a similar
sized cotton bath towel,
which absorbed 1,100mL
of water and has a slightly higher
absorbency of 3.26 times.
As the cotton towel is quite a bit
fluffier, it beats the Drylite towel
in terms of absorbency.
After soaking the
Sea to Summit Drylite towel,
I wringed out as much water as possible.
Here’s the Drylite before
wringing and after wringing.
So after wringing,
the Drylite weighed
294 grams, or 10.4 ounces.
This means that 32%
of water was left.
As for the cotton towel,
it weighed 842 grams
or 29.74 ounces after
wringing, and 46% of water was left.
Here’s the comparison between
the Drylite and the cotton towel.
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After wringing,
I left both the Sea to Summit Drylite
and the cotton towel to dry outdoors.
The Drylite started off at
294 grams or 10.4 ounces,
and dried completely
in about 40 minutes.
On the other hand, the cotton towel
took 2 hours and 15 minutes to dry.
When left indoors to dry after wringing,
the Drylite took a total
of 6 hours to dry completely.
In contrast, the cotton towel took much
longer, drying only after
27 hours.
Here’s a summary of the outdoor
and indoor timings for this drying test.
The Drylite is much less fluffy,
so it dried more quickly.
For this next drying test,
I measured 100mL or 3.4
fluid ounces of water,
for Sea to Summit Drylite and also
for the cotton towel and left both
of them to dry outdoors.
This is to make sure that both towels
absorbed the same amount of water.
The Drylite started off at 251 grams or
8.9 ounces and dried
completely in about 29 minutes.
As for the cotton towel, it took quite
a bit longer, drying in about 40 minutes.
I also conducted the same test indoors.
When left indoors, the Drylite took 4
hours and 15 minutes to dry completely.
On the other hand, the cotton towel took much
longer, drying in about 7 hours.
Here’s a summary of the outdoor and indoor
timings for this 100mL drying test,
which shows that the Drylite dries
much more quickly than Cotton towel.
I soaked both the Sea to Summit Drylite
and cotton towel in seawater, wringed out
whatever I could, and sealed
both in separate plastic bags.
At the 2-day mark, the Drylite towel had
a somewhat strong, musky smell,
while the cotton towel smelled sour
and unpleasant. At the 4-day mark, the
Drylite towel had no change in smell, while
the cotton towel started smelling
like food that had gone bad.
I also checked for mold on the Drylite,
and there wasn’t any.
For this grass and dirt test,
I dragged both the Sea to Summit Drylite
and the cotton towel along a stretch
of grass and stepped on them.
The Drylite picked up only one speck
of dirt, which I shook off really easily.
The cotton towel picked up more dirt,
which I thought came off easily,
but after getting home, I noticed some
dirt was still stuck to it.
For this test, the Drylite towel
trumps the cotton towel.
When it came to sand, some did stick
to the Drylite, though
a few good shakes got rid of it.
Sand also stuck to the cotton towel,
but shaking it did the job as well.
Both towels did well in the sand test.
The cotton towel
might have performed
better than you expected because
it’s not fluffy and has short piles.
The Sea to Summit Drylite weighs
151 grams or 5.3 ounces,
whereas a similar-sized
cotton towel weighs
337 grams or 11.9 ounces.
It is also significantly more compact.
Here’s what it looks like beside
the cotton towel from the side,
and also from the top.
For further comparison,
here’s what the Drylite looks like
beside a 16 ounce and a 32 ounce Nalgene
bottle from the side, and from the top.
The Drylite comes with a
hanging loop for easy
carry and drying, and you never have
to worry about it dragging on the floor.
As for the storage pouch, sadly,
it doesn’t come with a hanging loop.
To fold the Drylite towel, simply keep
halving it until it fits back
into the storage pouch.
You can also just stuff it back
into the pouch easily without folding.
The Sea to Summit Drylite towel is soft
and smooth to the touch with a suede
finish and isn’t stiff. However,
the large size is a little smaller than
a regular bath towel, and it
also sticks to your skin,
so you have to pat down instead of wiping.
As for quality,
the stitching is consistent with no gaps,
but started to fray a little bit.
After about 4 months of light usage,
the Drylite towel went from its original
weight of 151 grams,
to a weight of 149 grams,
losing more than 1%
of its original material.
The Drylite colors also
tend to bleed a lot.
On the first wash,
the Gray color bled the least,
followed by the Cobalt Blue,
and the Berry color
was the worst, staining my storage pouch
and my other camping towels.
The hanging loop is high quality
and secure, and your Drylite
won’t drag on the ground,
whereas the Velcro of the storage
pouch seems to be of lesser quality.
It started giving way right out of the box,
and the tiny Velcro hooks kept dropping off.
To sum up, the Drylite towel
isn’t that comfortable,
and the quality seems to be lacking.
I read the reviews on Amazon,
and here’s what I found.
Positive reviews said that the Sea
to Summit Drylite towel is fast drying,
absorbent, compact
and lightweight. From my testing,
I found that the Drylite dries about 30%
faster than a cotton towel, is more
compact, but has a slightly
lower absorbency.
The Drylite is also not
the fastest drying camping towel
on the market, and it’s
also not the most compact.
On the other hand, negative reviews have
said that the Drylite towel sticks to your
skin, does not dry you off well,
picks up odors, and tends
to bleed. From my experience,
I agree with all of these.
It’s not the most comfortable,
and my Drylite towel bled quite a bit.
I also read something about antibacterial
treatment, but my Drylite towel did not
have that, which explains
the picking up of odors.
So what are my personal pros and cons for
the Sea to Summit Drylite towel?
The Drylite is resistant to grass,
dirt and sand particles.
It’s also compact,
and wrings out 68%
of the water it absorbs. As for cons,
the Drylite towel sticks to skin,
and isn’t that comfortable.
It also picks up odors,
the quality isn’t great,
and it bleeds a lot.
As for absorbency and drying time,
the Drylite towel is just average
compared to other camping towels.
So, neither a pro nor con for these.
Would I recommend the Sea to Summit Drylite
towel? Well, it’s a pretty good camping towel
and it beats a regular cotton towel
in aspects like wringing, drying,
odor resistance,
dirt repellence, and portability.
However, I don’t think I can recommend
the Drylite towel simply because it
isn’t outstanding in any way.
I have other camping towels that are more
dirt repellent, more compact, that wring out
better, while at the same time being more
comfortable and picking
up no odors at all.
In fact, out of all the camping towels I
have, the Drylite has the most severe bleeding
issue, which is a pretty big con.
In that case, which is the best
camping towel that I recommend?
Here’s a video where I bought 10
of the best camping towels on the market,
tested them rigorously and gave
all my recommendations.
If you enjoyed this review,
I’m sure you would love that video, too.
If you prefer reading or watching,
please visit my website
at campingguidance.com,
where you can find all this info as well.
Thank you for watching and I’ll
see you in the next one.