About the reviewer

31 year kayak veteran of rivers, oceans, sprints and anything else you can do in a kayak

Test environment

Rough summer conditions on SF Bay

Review

Not only have I paddled both I have owned both. Both are really great boats for different reasons. First let me note that I have paddled dozens of boats in my 30+ years of kayaking. I tour, race, train, watch birds, take photos and do everything else I can in a kayak. Favorites over the years have included the Westside Thunderbolt, Wilderness Systems Arctic Hawk and Seda Spirit. Again, all for different reasons.
The Nemo is my current boat of choice for sea kayak racing. I raced the Epic 18X Ultra for 2 years and recently sold it. At 145 pounds I never felt like I could get enough of it in the water. The Nemo is exactly as fast for me over any given course at any given heart rate but with a heck of a lot more stability. I think if I weighed 200 pounds this would not have been an issue but I often felt like a cork adrift on the sea in the Epic.
My Epic had to be replaced after 11 months of ownership because of a delamination between the Kevlar and the Nomex core. Epic was great about this and the replacement boat they gave me for free was fine. The rudder on the Nemo has given me trouble and Kayakpro is replacing it with their newer version at no cost. All kayaks have flaws and no two boats come off the line exactly the same. The important point is that a manufacturer stands behind their product. Both do.
I didn’t like the seat in the Epic and I replaced it with a K-1 seat. It wasn’t too hard to do using a conventional carbon platform attached to the Epic rail system with some side shims added. I liked it so much I thought I would do it for the Nemo. I never needed to. The Nemo seat was perfect for me right out of the box. Again, was one right and one wrong? Nope. One fit and one didn’t. Beware reviews that paint the world as all one way or the other.
There are some minor points that are worth noting. The accessories on the Epic, deck rigging, mounts, handles, are all rather inferior quality. It is easy enough to replace them with good stuff but it would be even easier for the factory to install quality materials to begin with. This may have been fixed in later models than my early 2008 boat. This is not a problem with the Nemo.
The rudders on the older Epic’s lose contact with the water in good surf. I understand this has been fixed in more recent models with an upgraded rudder. I hope that is available as a kit to current owners. Nemo had a different rudder problem, basically a thread stripping problem. They corrected this design and have a retro-fit kit.
So I wish I could get all heated up the way some reviewers do but I guess 30 years of paddling and a lot of water later it seems to me that there is a boat out there for each of us and as long as you’ve got a good dealer, a good manufacturer and reasonable expectations you are going to get a good boat and have a lot of fun

Conclusion

The Nemo worked best for me. Try them both before you buy either and find your own "sweet spot" boat.