Discovery Ultra Fast Dry Towel - Think of it as the Un-Towel

If you are a swimmer open to new ideas that work, the Ultra Fast-Dry Towel is perfect for you. If you are a conservative, traditionalist kind of swimmer, then this towel is still a great towel, but you are probably not going to like it because of its stretchy, un-towel like feel. This is five-star swim gear, knocked down a bit because of the feel-feedback from those traditional towel lovers. I say get over it and join the un-towel generation. Note: no matter what kind of swimmer you are, this towel is a perfect emergency backup towel to keep in your gear bag for those days you forget to pack your regular towel.

The Discovery Trekking Ultra Fast-Dry Towel does what a towel should do. It takes water off of you. But it is a lot more, and a lot less, than that. Some of you may remember the old 7-Up commercials and the "un-cola" idea. The Ultra Fast-Dry Towel is the un-towel. You will either love it or hate it.

It gets water off of you (or off of anything) quickly, easily, and very, very well. It is great to use as a wrap coming out of the pool or the shower. It takes up less space in a gear bag than a traditional towel of similar surface area. I (and other swimmers) used it for about 6-weeks, and it is not showing any signs of wear and tear. It did not get stinky when left wet, in a gear bag, in the back seat of a car for a weekend (probably due to the silver content of the material, designed to act as an antimicrobial agent). Besides doing a quick job of drying me after a swim, it dries fast as well (when I remember to take it out of the gear bag in the back my car).

On the hate side? That is where my thought of an un-towel comes into play. Hate may be too strong; perhaps misunderstand, untraditional, or revolutionary are better ways to describe the feelings some of the testers tried to convey. "It dried me off, but it did not feel like a towel" sums up the reasons of those swimmers that said they did not like it.

Most of us think a towel is supposed to feel a certain way. This towel does not feel like a towel! It's smooth and stretchy. It was not that it did not work (it does, better than traditional towels), it is that it did not feel as expected. We all think a towel is supposed to feel a certain way on our skin, but the nature of the fabric used for the Ultra Fast-Dry Towel is a "lightweight moisture-management fabric" and is not what most people think of when they think of a towel. It feels odd.

Feel, not function. Get over it!

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.