NorCal wetsuit question

Tax day is coming and I'm planning on buying a wetsuit with my refund. I'm going to be diving NorCal (Monterey and Sonoma) mainly and I wanted your opinions on 7mm wetsuit vs 7mm semi-dry suit.

Will i be losing any dexterity with the semi dry?
Do i really need the dexterity to begin with?
Should the wetsuit be able to do both freedive and scuba?
Or should I just go freedive specific?

What do you wear?
Are you happy with it?

This is an important decision for me seeing how finances suck and I want to get the best bang for my buck.
Thanks for your imput

A semi-dry will be difficult to flood when freediving, and you might have bubbles following you all the way down, You probably will have to work harder to get down because of the trapped air. You probably will be much noisier when going down. You might need a bit more weight to go down, and by the same token you will be overweight on the bottom. If the air works it self out, you might be negative close to the surface, and if you do happen to blackout, you will sink back down. For freediving its very important to be as relaxed and comfortable as possible in the water.
But to be honest with you, I never tried a semi-dry, just a few thoughts that popped into my mind right now why I would not try it.

Many freediving guys will cut vents in their suits and hoods so the air will vent quickly and they can slip into the water quietly

Another thing to keep in mind. While scuba diving we spend most of our time underwater where the water usually is cooler. When freediving, we spend most of our time in the warmer surface water, and a thinner, more comfortable suit might be better.

I love my 7 mm FJ semidry from Aqua-Flite.

Custom Wetsuits, Scuba Diving Skins, Parkas from AquaFlite

If you're going to be freediving get a freedive specific suit.
Look at brands like: Omer, Picasso, Riffe, Yazbek, etc.
Get one made out of Yamamoto skin-in material. 7 mil is the standard for Norcal.

If it's for scuba look into something for scuba. A lot of people go with custom made suits just because of the premium materials available and the excellent fit. In the long run you save money with a custom suit. There are some OK off the rack suits but generally they are made out of some really spongy stuff so they will fit a wide variety of different body shapes. The problem is they seriously lack compression resistance and can be ruined in a matter of a dozen dives if taken deep.

I have a custom 7mm farmer with no-zip pullover jacket made by AquaFlite. It uses a Nylon-out, coated skin-in material they call Oceanliner with Titanium. I am very pleased with the fit and working with them. Because the entire suit is the same material used for cuff seals on most semi-dry suits, there is no noticeable water circulation, far less than my old custom suits.

I do find the current blended neoprene materials to be very flexible and comfortable, but compress far more readily than the nitrogen-blown Rubatex materials they have virtually replaced in the wetsuit market.

Compared to my old Rubatex suits, this one requires more weigh because it is 7mm instead of ¼" thickness and is noticeably lighter out of the water. It is warmer in shallow water, but becomes noticeably cooler below about 50'. It also requires more BC adjustments due to the greater material compression. It is a great suit for freediving but I will probably get a Rubatex suit made for Scuba. I find dry suits so much more cumbersome and delicate than a good wetsuit in North Coast temperature ranges.

ZKY/Eric is absolutely correct regarding poor memory of the neoprene blends in "open cell" freediving suits. The term Open Cell is a misnomer. Sponges are open cell. More accurately, it is a closed cell foam Neoprene without an internal surface that exposes individual split cells — much like the cut edge on wetsuit material. The gas cells are much smaller than Scuba suit materials. All those split cells act a tiny suction cups to limit water circulation. They are far more delicate and require lubricant to easily don. If your Scuba dives are mostly shallower than 50' and you don’t want to invest in two suits, a suit like my new farmer may be worth considering.