Review: Malachi & Company’s PodWear ProActive t-shirt

Malachi & Company’s PodWear Mens ProActive Short-Sleeve T-shirt is an amazing high-quality, high-performance fitness shirt that has some pretty smart mods built in to allow you to carry your iPod Shuffle or Nano with you while working out. Available in black and white, and in men’s and ladies’ versions, I tried out the men’s version, just for reference.

Start with a great t-shirt, and make it better seems to have been the motto that Malachi and Company worked with while coming up with their PodWear ProActive t-shirts. They first developed a very well tailored fitness t-shirt—and believe me, I have put a wide collection of this type of technical shirt to the test over recent years—made out of extremely comfortable material, and then made smart, unobtrusive modifications to allow you to carry your music with you too.

A right-side hip pocket with a Velcro closure keeps your flash iPod on you and some loops along the side leading up to the neckline keep the headphone cable from tangling around things like exercise equipment, your own or others’ limbs, fences or posts you run past, or even shopping carts while you’re working out. All these have tripped me up in the past and that darned shopping cart ripped the buds out of my ears so hard it smashed them! Definitely wouldn’t have happened if I had been wearing a PodWear shirt.

That hip pocket is meant for your iPod (or any other small, flash-based MP3 player) but it’s equally handy for your cell phone or keys even.

A caveat with this that they stress on the site is that though the pocket is large enough to carry a hard drive-based iPod (or other MP3 player) the greater weight of these devices will be noticeable as you do active things in your PodWear shirt. Larger devices will bounce around in the hip pocket. It is perfect in every way for you Nano and Shuffle users, your device is easy to hand when needed and safely out of the way when not, but those wanting to use heavier devices are probably better served with sports arm bands.

The material the shirts are made of is light and breathable, and the shirts themselves are comfortable and unencumbering. To test them out thoroughly, I wore these in turn to work, as undershirts, for a few days and can confirm that they are, as I said, extremely comfortable. And as a work-out shirt, I find them lighter than some of my previous favourites. They breathe and hold their shape well, and do not chafe even when sodden. A very very nice feature indeed.

Well-priced, well made, well thought-out, the PodWear Mens ProActive Short-Sleeve T-shirts are great additions to your electronics savvy workout gear. With the slight consideration of being better engineered for flash iPods, if you’re serious about your workout and taking your iPod with you, the PodWear T’s are excellent. And at $28, you’ll no doubt wind up wanting to own a few.