BIFINS REVIEW
B-Spec Carbon Long Fins by 29/71 (Budget-Friendly + Pack Considerable Performance)
We’ve partnered with 29/71 to test, review, and stock their range of freediving equipment. Here we share our opinion of the products to help you find affordable and high-quality equipment that delivers on performance for all your recreational, competitive, and teaching needs.
Here's What We Think
In our combined thirteen years of freediving, we’ve gotten pretty resourceful at trying out different brands and types of bifins before committing to buying them. But we realise that’s not possible for everyone.
So, how do you know what freediving fins you should get if you can’t dive-test them beforehand?
Well, this largely depends on what job you want your bifins to do.
If you want a pair of carbon bifins for general training (freediving in the pool or on the line), working as a freediving instructor or for recreational diving…
… You are going to love the B-Spec Carbon Long Fins by 29/71.
(Need more power? Check out the XX-Blades for your competitive needs).
Design and Manufacture
The B-Spec 100% Carbon Bifins are designed as a budget-friendly option for freedivers looking to buy their first fins or as long-lasting freediving blades.
An older version already exists on the market, but we’ve been testing the newer version made with pre-preg carbon fibre.
The advantage of ‘pre-preg’ is that the carbon sheets come from the manufacturer with the perfect amount of resin already built-in. Then, all that needs to be done is the layering (aka blade design) and the heat-press treatment to activate and fuse the resins. This means the likelihood of manufacturing defects is very low, and the resin to fibre ratio is perfect on every pair of blades, producing very lightweight and reactive fins.
A nifty design plus of the B-Spec fins from 29/71 is that you can easily disassemble the foot pocket from the blade by unscrewing them for ease of packing and travelling. It also means you can swap foot pockets interchangeably with their other range of long and short blades – helping to keep costs down if you want different fins for different activities.
Nathan’s only tiny complaint is that the blade design has an asymmetrical angled tip. This looks really cool, but at very, very low power (re-positioning around students or on the bottom) he can feel the asymmetrical tip wanting to slightly twist the blade.
That being said: 1) He is hyper-aware of these kinds of things, and 2) We don’t think it affects the efficiency (at least, we can’t feel it) during normal use and compared to others blades it still out-performs them in a number of ways (see below).
Performance
Now, this is where things get exciting…
We can honestly say, the overall performance of the B-Spec Bifins when used for line training and in-water coaching is surprisingly impressive!
**Considering that they are less than ½ the cost of most other carbon bi-fins on the market (see price section below)**
PLUS the fact that they are only the ‘B version’ of 29/71s flagship fin, the X-blade (technically that makes them ‘C version of 2971’s XX performance blades) we were blown away by how good they are.
Nathan’s feedback to 29/71 founder and blade designer Laim was “of course, as a competitive diver, I’d love to have a pair of XX blades, but if I knew I could only own B-Specs for the rest of my life, I’d have no concerns that they would limit me in any way”.
Now that’s saying a lot! Since Nathan has previously had major complaints about multiple €350+ fins which caused him to stop using them.
For example, after switching a few months ago, subjectively, Nathan has found the B-Specs outperform a number of popular brands in the following ways…
Marked reduction in lactic legs on 50m CWTb dives
“Even out of shape for moderately deep line diving, I’ve noticed a significant lack of lactic acid and surprisingly these fins seem to be the least fatiguing that I’ve ever used for 50m diving.”
Extraordinary efficiency during recreational diving
“On recreational sessions, I notice an extraordinarily wide range of efficiency. I have very little issues making the fins work comfortably when doing slow reef diving at 10m, or powering up quickly from a long bottom time at 35m.”
More power and reactivity for teaching and coaching sessions
“Arguably teaching on the line is the most fatiguing type of diving (lots of reps, with bad breathe-ups, and poor streamlining while watching clients) and I was very happy with how the fins performed. I had the power to keep up with quick CWT divers, the soft slow-mo capacity to descend slowly to watch divers performing EQ exercises on FIM dives, and the kind of quick-responsive feedback needed to make small adjustments to reposition myself as needed around the diver(s).”
Not the best pick for power sprinting “The only instance where I feel the B-specs might be sub-optimal might be extreme spearfishing (deep and very large fish), or maybe in a very deep rescue situation. They somewhat lack the top-end sprinting power of other blades, but that being said, I’d still be confident to do a 30m rescue in them if needed.”
Price
When we started freediving, we couldn’t afford many of the premium freediving fins on the market, and to be honest, we still can’t!
Forking out $500-800 on a pair of bifins for freediving or spearfishing is a considerable expense that needs careful thinking through.
With that in mind, it’s actually laughable how affordable the B-Spec fins are at only £185.
Considering that they’re less than ½ the price of Molchanovs and Alchemy, we can’t believe how much performance is possible.
There may be some instances where another pair may be better specialised, for example for max depth line diving or for spearfishing, but as a general do-it-all carbon fin, we think you’ll be hard-pressed to beat it.
The B-Specs make it painless to switch between training, teaching, and recreational diving, which isn’t something we could say about our previous fins (Trygons, Alchemy, and Molchanovs).
For a new(ish) freediver, it’s a no brainer! These blades are very affordable and compared to plastic fins, the difference is beyond night and day. You get a jump to true carbon quality for only £80-100 more than the horrible plastic options most new divers end up going with, and for sure no one wants to drop £400 on their first set of fins either.
Even if the B-Specs weren’t so affordable, we would still recommend these blades to most freedivers. We now use them all the time when coaching and recreational diving, and can honestly say that we'd even feel confident doing depth and pool competitions in them as well.
It begs the question, why pay more when you can have so much performance for less?