Ordering belts online - Quality comparison.

[chiliphil1]

I may be late to the party here but I'll toss my hat in as well.

For colored belts, go with the most affordable thing you can find. From my experience most if not all white belts are poorly made, very thin and flimsy. As you move up to other colors the quality is much better. I personally came up wearing century belts and never had an issue with them, they're quite cheap as well. Most of the time colored belts are worn for 6 months to a year max, so there is no need to spend a lot of money here.

When the time comes and you're ready to purchase a black belt I would go with Shureido, hands down. Again, as I was coming up we had Century, nothing wrong with these and my 20 year old Century is still hanging in there BUT I splurged a little and bought myself a Shureido and let me tell you, I cannot possibly come up with enough words to describe how amazing this belt is. I've seen an Eosin panther and I will admit, it seems very close to the Shureido BUT I'd still give Shureido a slight edge for this reason, they wear in better. When you get a new Shureido it's like a board, nearly impossible to tie, comes undone easily, doesn't hang at all but over time it gets much better. The panther didn't seem to do that, I know someone with a 3 year old panther and it still doesn't tie properly.

You can order a Shureido from discountmas.com with no embroidery or go to okinawadirect.com and you can get one with custom embroidery. You can also buy colored Shureido belts but again, probably not worth the money.

[mjh1969]

Shureido belts are the best quality belts that I have ever seen. Luckily the Shureido USA store is 20 minutes from my house so I was able to gt one direct.