I’ve been snorkeling since I was 5, and I am PADI certified. I grew up on the water in Florida, with my mother often having to tell people that no, that wasn’t a lost and floating life jacket, that was her daughter, always floating with a mask, looking at sea creatures. I’ve lived in Florida for 25 years, on and off.

For this guide, I did the following:

• I interviewed experts, including Arielle Halford, general manager of Divers Direct, a dive shop located in Key West, Florida.
• I sank deep into reviews on YouTube, customer comments on Amazon and other sites, and discussions on dive sites across the internet.
• I tested eight snorkel sets with friends in Key West who have been snorkeling and diving for decades in locations such as the Bahamas, Cozumel, the Florida Keys, Jamaica, and Roatán.
• For further testing, I took the sets to Ginnie Springs in Central Florida. I swam a length of the springs to test the propulsion of the fins, the comfort of the masks, and the comfort and function of the snorkels.

This guide focuses on snorkel sets for adolescents and adults who are looking to casually snorkel calmer waters, such as springs or rivers or particularly placid ocean locales.

Of course, while traveling, many people rent such equipment—but you might say a hard no to something that has been used by the multitudes and is supposed to go in your mouth. Though renting gear is potentially more affordable, it also limits your options, and you can’t test it in advance to learn whether the mask leaks on your particular face shape, say, or how well the fins fit your feet.

Owning a snorkel set of your own is ideal if you envision yourself doing this more than once or twice in your life. After you take the time to find a set that fits you, you’ll know that it will serve you well whenever you need it.

A basic snorkel set consists of a pair of fins, a mask, a snorkel tube, and a bag to carry all of that. The fins allow you to move more efficiently through the water. The mask and tube allow you to see and breathe while underwater. One end of the snorkel tube fits in your mouth, while the other end sticks up out of the water’s surface, and the snorkel may include contraptions to keep water out and blast it out if it happens to get in.

“The most important thing when it comes to entry-level stuff is getting a good-fitting mask,” said Divers Direct’s Arielle Halford, “because if the mask doesn’t fit right, you’re not going to enjoy your time.”

Though no leaky mask succeeded in earning our recommendation, even with our picks we can’t guarantee a seal for people with facial hair. Whiskers have foiled nearly every mask design, and people rocking a ’stache should use a silicone-based seal in addition to their gear.

Every snorkel we tested has a dry top: When you submerge, a mechanism blocks the flow of water into the snorkel and hence your lungs. This feature can be great for beginners, who are unused to this kind of equipment, or for people who are swimming in choppy water, which tends to splash into the tube. (You wouldn’t want the extra buoyancy if you were planning on freediving or scuba diving.) Just be aware that, as dry-top snorkels include more moving parts, they require more maintenance and create a possible point of failure. Rinse yours in fresh water after every use to prevent corrosion from the sea’s minerals.

Based on the consensus among our testers, interviews with experts, and public opinion, we set the following criteria for the gear we decided to test:

Mask materials, design, and fit:

• The mask’s skirt and nose cover should be silicone. Rubber and PVC are both stiff and can’t form to your face well; they also tend to crack over time. Silicone is more pliable and can conform to the face better, creating a tight seal. “Good-quality silicone is going to feel soft and kind of skin-like,” advised Divers Direct’s Arielle Halford. You should be able to squeeze your nose through the cover to equalize pressure in your ears if necessary. Some experts recommend an opaque skirt to keep out sunlight and glare coming in from the side. We found during our testing, though, that opacity didn’t make much of a difference, especially with one’s face straight down in the water.
• The lens should be made of tempered glass, which resists scratches better than plastic, with as wide a viewing field as possible. The lens can be a single piece—as in a pair of shield sunglasses—or multiple pieces.
• The strap should be broad and split to spread the pressure across the back of your head. It should be easy to loosen and tighten, since you’re most likely going to be adjusting it with wet hands at some point. (If you’re looking for straps that won’t rip your hair, Halford said that masks really don’t have an existing built-in solution for that problem. After going through two impromptu haircuts on boats, she has wrapped all of her mask straps in neoprene covers.)
• All the masks we tested were about the same width, but they varied in height by about an inch. Just make sure that the mask doesn’t press in on your forehead or your nose. The best way to test a mask’s fit, said Halford, is to hold it up to your face and confirm whether the skirt—the rubbery part surrounding the plastic frame—is touching your skin all the way around. If you inhale slightly and hold your breath, it should stay on your face until you exhale.
• As for fogging, many factors come into play, including your body temperature and the temperature of the water, the volume of the space between your face and the mask, and whether you’re exhaling through your nose and creating a warmer environment in your mask than the water, which is hard not to do when the water temperature is much cooler than your body. Because of the complexity of how fog is created, we deemphasized this element in our testing. If you have any trouble with fogging, applying a defogger should do the trick.

Fin design and fit:

• The fins should give you sufficient power on the down stroke—fins that are too flexible can’t give you the thrust you need. If you can easily bend a fin in half, it’s too flexible.
• The fins should have a wide strap to spread out the pressure on the back of your heels. A heel loop is convenient for pulling your fins on with just a finger.
• Fins have either a fully enclosed heel or an open heel. “A lot of people really like the full-foot fins for snorkeling, because they don’t have to make any adjustments. It fits their foot, they put it on, they go. Myself, I prefer an open-heel fin,” said Halford. “I’ve got a small foot, so it’s very hard for me to find a full-foot fin that works.” An open heel also provides room for booties, which can help protect your feet if you’re walking ashore on rocks. We tested snorkel sets with both styles of fins.

Snorkel design:

• You should neither sound like Darth Vader as you swim (you’ll annoy yourself and everyone around you!) nor get a lung full of seawater if a wave hits. Your snorkel should consist of a tube that’s wide enough to let you breathe easily and quietly, plus a splash guard on top.
• The top of the snorkel should also have a locking dry valve that closes automatically when you dive, and the bottom should include a purge valve to clear out any water that happens to get in.
• Snorkels should also have a flexible tube, a mouthpiece with a thin silicone separator that allows your mouth to close naturally over it, and maybe even an angled mouthpiece holder, which is more comfortable, though it may limit you to using it on just one side of your mask.

Gear bags:

• We sought a gear bag with good drainage or airflow to prevent mold and mildew regardless of whether you’re disciplined enough to always rinse and dry your equipment before putting it away. Since you’re likely to be traveling with your gear, sturdy straps on a gear bag allow it to double as a carry-on.

Price:

• We looked at gear priced under $100 but more than $40 so that we could focus on sets made with good-quality materials, such as silicone and tempered glass, while staying under three figures.

Robust and high-quality, the Cressi Palau LAF Set will take you far and last long enough to accompany you on trip after trip. Made in Italy, this gear—just like the company behind it—has a long history of success at sea.

The mask is sturdily constructed with high-quality materials. The set’s mask, called the Onda mask when sold separately, has been a standby for 25 years. It consists of a single flat pane, with tempered glass and a transparent silicone skirt, outlined in a scratch-resistant plastic frame that matches the color of the set you choose: blue, pink, or yellow.

To help you admire what’s below you, Cressi gives the lens a slight angle downward. The nose pocket provides enough give to equalize pressure underwater. The strap clip is built directly into the frame for a sturdy hold; in contrast, on other masks the clip is attached to the skirt. The back of the strap, which measures over half an inch wide, includes raised grips on the split section to help you get the mask on and off easily, even with wet hands.

The snorkel is the most flexible one we tested. Near the mouthpiece of the snorkel, the elliptically shaped tube turns from plastic into a bendy corrugated silicone, providing more flexibility for you to insert the mouthpiece without pulling on your mouth or letting it hang straight down and out of your face between swims.

In our tests, the splash guard on the snorkel’s top kept out errant droplets, and the flawless dry valve kept water out beneath the surface. Because the mouthpiece is angled slightly, you should wear it only on one side of the mask. The purge valve functioned well when I manually filled the snorkel with water; it’s also replaceable should it break, unlike the valve on our budget pick. (The snorkel is available separately under the name Supernova.)

The fins are the most likely to fit you. Whereas most other fins offer just two size options, the Palau fins come in four sizes, and their open heel allows for even more customization. You adjust the straps by pushing a button rather than lifting a buckle, a feature that our testers appreciated.

The Palau fins also outperformed most of the others we tested, though we can’t say whether this was due more to the below-blade foot pocket—which was designed to increase the fin’s surface area and move you through the water with more speed—or the “power transmission side rails” on the fin’s rubberized edges. The pockets’ rubber is soft enough that we were able to swim in these fins barefoot. The only other fins that felt just as comfortable were those from U.S. Divers.

The nylon bag is comfortable to carry. It also has some room for a few beach essentials, though maybe not your towel, and unlike other bags (such as the Zeeporte set’s) that expect you to use the drawstring as a strap, this bag has a wide strap that won’t dig into your shoulder.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Though we found the mask and the fins to be slightly less comfortable than those of our top pick, the Zeeporte Mask Fin Snorkel Set offers a great swim for the lowest price of the bunch.

The mask is easier to adjust than that of our top-pick set. This mask’s single-pane, tempered-glass lens measured wider than any other we tested, at 15.5 cm. It has pinch-release buckles on the mask strap, something we missed on our top pick. The strap doesn’t split in the back, as the one on our top-pick mask does, but rather gets wide and webbed, which does a better job of staying put and doesn’t create that oh-so-attractive hair bubble on people with longer hair. The double-gasketed silicone face skirt didn’t leak in our tests, and the silicone feels supple and provides space to squeeze your nose for equalizing the pressure.

The snorkel wasn’t the best we tested, but it wasn’t terrible either. It felt fairly comfortable to wear, without much pulling to the side, and the dry valve worked great when we submerged. The purge valve worked fine too.

The fins are shorter than those of our top-pick set. The fins, which have an open heel and an above-the-blade foot pocket, measure only around 16 inches long, but they still provided thrust while we were swimming against a current. They’re also more likely to fit in a carry-on.

This set comes in more color options. You have nine to choose from, including one with a black mask skirt, which some people might prefer to keep out glare.

The carrying bag provides more ventilation than our top pick’s does. The set comes in a bag with clear plastic on one side and mesh on the other.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Cressi Palau SAF Set was a former top pick. However, the shorter fins simply didn’t provide enough power in our latest testing round. Also, we’ve noticed over the years that they often go out of stock.

We liked a lot about the Phantom Aquatics Rapido Boutique Collection. The fin straps had pull holes at the ends, and the silicone around the mask felt soft. But the fins were just too floppy to provide the speed we wanted.

The Seavenger Aviator Snorkeling Set seemed to be a potential budget pick, but the mask leaked and water got in the snorkel when swimmers submerged, so it was definitely out.

The mask in the TUSA Sport Power-View Dry Snorkeling Set divided our crew of testers; while some loved it, for others it leaked. We also docked points because the mask lacked a quick release, and its two-lens design didn’t give as clear a view as a single lens. On top of that, the rubber in the fins was too stiff, causing toe chafing.

What we noticed first about the U.S. Divers Cozumel Set and Admiral Set was how thick and stiff the silicone on the skirts of the masks was. The snorkel in each set was rigid, and the dry valve failed on the Cozumel’s snorkel. But if I were buying fins separately, I’d choose the full-shoe fins of the Cozumel Set.

To get the most out of your investment, here are some expert tips on how to fit and keep your snorkeling gear:

• New masks often come with a thin, protective silicone film that you won’t be able to see but will make your mask fog up. When you get your mask, wash the lens and skirt at least three times with a mask scrub to remove that film. Our expert Arielle Halford of Divers Direct Key West recommends the 500 PSI Mask Scrub included in this pack. Rinse well in fresh, clean water. If you plan to store your mask in the plastic box it came in, make sure to clean the inside of the box as well to remove any film remnants.
• Be sure to use the right antifog solution for your diving mask—the stuff intended for plastic swim goggles can’t do the job. Halford recommends Frog Spit.
• That said, antifog can also be quite irritating to the eyes. If you have sensitive peepers, try rubbing a little saliva onto the lens instead—it should do a decent job of defogging.
• If you’re new to snorkeling, practice in the shallow end of a pool first. This will get you acclimated to the feel of being in the water with, and breathing with, your snorkeling gear.
• If possible, try your new gear out close to home first, in case you want to make any changes before traveling with it.
• To get a good seal on your mask, avoid overtightening it. The mask should rest on your face; it’s the water pressure that seals it. If the mask leaves lines on your face, it’s probably too tight.
• Snorkeling is meant to be a leisure activity, so don’t wear yourself out doing it.
• Chemicals, sun, and salt will wreak havoc on your equipment. After each use, rinse all of your gear in fresh water. Then let it dry in the shade.

This article was edited by Christine Ryan.