The 5 Best Cheap Sunglasses of 2023
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Best Cheap Sunglasses
Shady Rays Classic Timber
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OVERALL
SCORE
Fit: Medium | Protection: Polarized, 100% UV, Category 3
REASONS TO BUY
Good eye protection
Versatile style
Comfortable
Stellar warranty program
REASONS TO AVOID
Lackluster case
Woodgrain pattern can rub off
Medium |Polarized, 100% UV, Category 3
The Shady Rays Classic Timber are straightforward unisex sunglasses with a well-executed wayfarer style. Their polarized lenses provide comfortable protection in bright light and high glare situations, and the woodgrain pattern on these plastic frames steps them up a notch over other similar styles in their appearance. They’re a comfortable width for most heads, with a unique combination of a smooth exterior with just a hint of a matte finish to add extra grip when you need it most. Our lead tester has put their extensive “Live Hard Warranty” to the test several times over the years, adding even more value to a single pair of shades that can be easily replaced when they get lost or broken.
If you’re on the hunt for super trendy shades, the Classic Timber lies more on the safe side of the trend scale. They also come with just a thin microfiber bag for a case, making us even more glad they have such a comprehensive coverage plan. Since we’ve been wearing a pair of these glasses for years, we’ve seen the woodgrain patterning start to rub off over the ears, but it will take a long time to get to that level of wear. All in all, the performance, style, and first-rate replacement program of these unisex glasses make them an excellent value buy.
We’ve been wearing – and loving – the Shady Ray Timber Classic for years.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Best Bang for Your Buck
Knockaround Paso Robles
$28 at Backcountry
$32 at Amazon
OVERALL
SCORE
Fit: Medium | Protection: Polarized, 100% UV, Unspecified VLT
REASONS TO BUY
Good colored lenses
Solid construction
Lots of color options
REASONS TO AVOID
Back glare is distracting
Smaller than expected
Medium |Polarized, 100% UV, Unspecified VLT
When it comes to value and performance, we love the Knockaround Paso Robles. The amber lenses we tested are a very pleasant color with consistent polarization, good contrast, and quality clarity. This easy wayfarer style looks good on most people, and they come in a ridiculous array of possible frame and lens color combinations to go with just about any look you might throw together. They’re sturdy and held up well through all our testing, with all the right elements for a pleasant wearing experience.
The Paso Robles are a tad narrower than we expected, given their “medium” sizing, but they weren’t too restrictive on most of our testers. We’re less impressed with the amount of glare coming off the backs of the lenses, which can be distracting in certain conditions. And if you don’t want people to see your eyes through your shades, these lenses may let you down. However, all things considered, we’re really big fans of these low-cost sunnies from Knockaround.
There are so many ways to style the many colors of the Knockaround Paso Robles.
Credit: Maggie Nichols
Best on a Super Tight Budget
Merry’s Polarized Aluminum
$14 at Amazon
OVERALL
SCORE
Fit: Medium | Protection: Polarized, 100% UV, Unspecified VLT
REASONS TO BUY
Great look
Dark lenses
Good coverage
REASONS TO AVOID
Too dark for low light
Hinges wore unevenly
Medium |Polarized, 100% UV, Unspecified VLT
The Merry’s Polarized Aluminum performed far better than their shockingly low price would suggest. The dark lenses are great on a bright day, while the larger size adds both coverage and extra style. Even our friends who aren’t normally into this type of look found themselves enjoying the vibe they got while wearing these shades. On top of that, the keyhole bridge is just enough to add a little flair to this already pretty cool pair of cheap sunglasses. The Merry’s also come with two cases and a cleaning cloth, all of which are great quality, adding even more value to this impressive budget pick.
Dark lenses are only ideal in certain kinds of light, and the Merry’s predictably fall a little short in low-light situations. They’re not outstanding lenses, though they’re not distorted or cloudy like some other models we tested at this price point. The hinges on ours loosened at slightly different rates during the several months of our testing, but they’re easy to adjust and retighten. Bottom line: if you need a solid pair of shades for a very low cost, these are the ones we’d pick any day.
We’re big fans of the look, feel, and price of the Merry’s Polarized Aluminum.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Best for Performance-Oriented Fashion
Sunski Yuba
$58 at REI
OVERALL
SCORE
Fit: Medium | Protection: Polarized, 100% UV, 11% VLT
REASONS TO BUY
Good color and clarity
Lightweight
Stylish
REASONS TO AVOID
Obvious counter-reflective glare
Runs small
Medium |Polarized, 100% UV, 11% VLT
The lightweight Sunski Yuba offer a more stylish than sporty look. Their lenses have good clarity and contrast and are pleasant to look through and wear. Though they’re a touch on the small side, they quickly became a well-loved pair for those they fit. They stand pleasantly away from most faces, helping them be one of the more comfortable pairs in this lineup for small-to-average-headed wearers. The thin but sturdy frames come in a decent variety of colors, allowing you to match your vibe.
Since these don’t touch the face much, sunlight can sneak in at the extra room around the edges. Compounding that issue, the backs of the lenses are quite reflective — in many situations, we could clearly see our eyeballs looking back at us. Folks with larger heads should look at other options, because the Yuba runs small. But, if you have the right-sized head to wear these, we love the style they bring to a pretty solid performance.
Many of our testers love the look and lightweight feel of the Yuba.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Best Cheap Aviators
Tifosi Shwae
OVERALL
SCORE
Fit: Medium | Protection: Polarized, 100% UV, Unspecified VLT
REASONS TO BUY
Good nose pads
Decent performance
Cool look
REASONS TO AVOID
Not adjustable
Limited coverage
Medium |Polarized, 100% UV, Unspecified VLT
Aviators are classically stylish sunglasses, and the Tifosi Shwae are our favorite pair when on a budget. These cool shades have a great mirrored finish and excellent shape that our testers appreciated. The lenses are pretty good, with a slight rosy tint to their brown shade. The Shwae also have numerous small hidden features that put them a step above the other aviators we’ve tested, like texturized rubber grips at the backs of the bows to hold them to your face and nose pads in sturdy metal plates rather than brittle arms.
Those nose pad plates are, however, not particularly adjustable. The lenses also aren’t ideal in lower light conditions, and some back reflection can make them challenging in certain bright situations. The flattened, open aviator design also lowers overall coverage in all the ways you would expect. But at the end of the day, when we want inexpensive aviators, it’s the Tifosi Shwae we reach for.
Diggin’ the style of the Shwae.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
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$14
“Cheap” sunglasses does NOT have to mean “bad” sunglasses.
Credit: Maggie Nichols
Why You Should Trust Us
We quite literally hunted through hundreds of sunglasses to find the best budget-friendly models to buy and test. Once they were in our hands, we wore them practically non-stop, taking them on vacations and up mountains. We drove long distances and spent afternoons doing yard work, enlisting the help of our friends, family, and colleagues to help test and rate these cheap sunnies.
Our testing of these affordable sunnies was divided across five different metrics:
- Lens Quality (30% of overall score weighting)
- Comfort (25% weighting)
- Style and Versatility (20% weighting)
- Frame Quality (15% weighting)
- Coverage (10% weighting)
Our testing of these affordable sunnies was divided across
Our lead tester for all these budget sunnies is Maggie Nichols, aided by our consultant, Bradley Nichols. Bradley has been an outdoor adventurer for most of his life, living and recreating around sunny Tahoe and the intense sun of the northern Nevadan desert. From summer hiking to winter skiing, Brad is always looking for the best pair of sunglasses to protect his eyes. Maggie has been a backcountry guide for over 15 years in some of the brightest areas of the planet. From exploring the Galapagos and paddling the Virgin Islands to backpacking the Sierra Nevadas and dog-sledding the North Pole, Maggie does it all. She’s a self-described “glasses junkie” who’s been wearing glasses since she was 4 years old and has a lot of demands for her eyewear. Together they make a knowledge team when it comes to this essential accessory.
Lightweight enough to forget you’re even wearing them.Looking and feeling good in the Paso Robles.These small glasses are a bit light on coverage.
Analysis and Test Results
Just about any pair of cheap sunglasses will sit on your face, but if you’re here, you’re like us and want to know that your money is well-invested in whatever pair you buy. We put all the models in this lineup through rigorous side-by-side testing to tease apart their performances across five metrics. Each pair is given an overall score by weighting these metrics based on their overall importance. Below, we break those scores down and get nitty-gritty with the details.
Value
In a group of cheap sunglasses, there are still some pretty significant differences in value. Some of the best-performing glasses are far from the most expensive in this review. The Knockaround Paso Robles are one great example of this. They offer excellent clarity and color, fairly sturdy construction, and come in a staggering array of colors to suit your personal style. The Merry’s Polarized Aluminum are another noteworthy pair. These classicly styled shades looked cool on most everyone, with dark lenses and solid coverage, all for a surprisingly low cost. Even our top-scorer, the Shady Rays Classic Timber, aren’t the most expensive option we tested, but they have outperformed the rest for the last few years now.
The J + S Aviator are nice and light and easy on the wallet.
Credit: Maggie Nichols
Lens Quality
Having bad lenses is the number one way to hate your sunglasses. We took this testing seriously, looking into all the specifications each pair claimed and testing them side-by-side to see how well they performed. We checked their tint, color, and clarity, and we wore them in all kinds of challenging lighting conditions. We noted details like the reflections on the backs of the lenses and how comfortable they kept our eyes for hours in the bright sun.
The best lenses in this lineup are the Shady Rays Classic Timber and Knockaround Paso Robles. Both these pairs have easy-to-wear amber lenses that increase contrast without making things look psychedelic. They’re both consistently polarized, very clear, and work well in most lighting conditions. The Suncloud Mayor also feature quality lenses. Their polarization isn’t entirely consistent, but their clarity is above average, and they’re comfortable to wear in both bright and lower light conditions.
The Shady Rays Classic Timber Amber lenses are a great color, with excellent clarity, good polarization, and a shade that works in variable lighting conditions.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
The Le Specs Armada are a little bit more particular, but if you like their lens strategy, they do it well. These blue-ish purple-y lenses have an intense gradient that leaves the bottom of the lenses rather light while protecting from top-down rays quite well. They’re not polarized, but they still work well in medium to bright light. Both the Tifosi Shwae and the Sojos Round Vintage also perform well when it comes to color and clarity of lenses and have just an average amount of back-lens reflection.
The Le Specs Armada lenses are a pleasant purpley-blue, with a very top-heavy gradient that works well in bright light.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Comfort
Our full panel of testers checked and judged how comfortable each pair of these sunglasses are to wear for long stretches. We noted where each pair touched our faces and if they were tight on some heads or face shapes. We checked adjustability where applicable and considered any additional features like rubber cushioning and nose pads. We gauged if they felt heavy, imbalanced, or squeezed any of our testers over several hours of wear.
Across all our testers, our favorite shades to wear all day are the Shady Rays Classic Timber. Their standard size worked well across the medium and large-headed testers in our pack, and they have a smaller size that’s an even better fit on narrow-faced folks. The Merry’s Polarized and Knockaround Paso Robles are also rather comfortable, in that familiar sort of way. The Knockarounds are a touch narrower than we expected based on their advertised medium size but still provided a cozy, snug fit that didn’t seem to bother our testing panel. The Merry’s fit easily, though they are a bit larger lensed than most. This makes them front heavy, which we only really noticed when overly active, as sometimes they would slide down sweaty noses.
The Merry’s Polarized Aluminum proved themselves comfortable for all-day wear.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
The Suncloud Mayor and Sojos Round Vintage are both comfortable for many people. The Mayor run a bit smaller than average, and we found them most comfortable on medium to narrow heads. The Sojos, despite being exceptionally oversized, are surprisingly well-balanced and fit more securely than we expected from such a front-heavy pair of shades. They do have metal bow ends that sometimes scraped our faces as we put them on and took them off. The Sungait Designer Gradient, Wowsun Polarized Gradient, and Le Specs Armada are all rather similar in their fit, working well for most. The bows don’t squeeze too much, and the front-heavy frames are reasonably balanced. The J + S Classic Aviator are also reasonably comfortable for most, with adjustable nose pads and a looser fit that doesn’t constrict.
For narrower faces, the Suncloud Mayor are rather comfortable.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Style and Versatility
There’s no single style that everyone will love, but we did our best to identify trends and highly loved models across our testing panel. Some glasses truly seemed to look good on just about everyone, while others had more specific fans or uses. We also considered the versatility across activities for all these sunglasses — do they work just as well for a backyard barbeque as they do for an all-day hike, or do they become slick and sweaty, falling down your nose?
Both the Merry’s Polarized and Le Specs Armada impressed us with their unassuming yet elevated style. Our entire testing panel liked the looks of both these pairs. If aviators are your thing, the Tifosi Shwae are our favorites. These glasses have the classic aviator look but with details that make them better than other cheap options, like fully mirrored lenses and tortoise shell covers on the bow ends. The Sunski Yuba are also rather fashionable but more on the spectrum of activewear glasses. They’re a tad small, so not all our testers liked how they looked in them, but for those they fit, the Yuba bring up the style.
The Merry’s Polarized Aluminum offer across-the-board style, for a price that fits just about any budget.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
The Wowsun and Sungait once again proved to be a versatile style that many wearers enjoyed seeing themselves in. The Knockaround Paso Robles and Shady Rays Classic Timber both bring that classic wayfarer style, each with their own twist. The Paso Robles come in a huge variety of color options, while the Shady Rays have a faux woodgrain finish that takes them up a notch from your classic festival glasses. The Suncloud Mayor offer a pretty solid style to activewear-wearing folks. And if you dig aviators in all black, the J + S Classic Aviator let you rock that vibe.
Look good, feel good, in the Tifosi Shwae.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Frame Quality
A good pair of frames will help you be able to wear your shades for years of adventures. We assessed frame quality by prodding, pulling, twisting, and generally wearing these glasses across all types of activities. We researched their construction materials, monitored them for scratches, and noticed if the hinges or lenses became loose. We also scoured the internet to learn other users’ common complaints and tested them for those potential pitfalls.
Topping the charts here, by a good margin, are the Sunski Yuba. These thin yet flexible frames have resisted breaking, warping, uneven hinge wear, and even most scratches over the years we’ve been wearing them. They seem flimsy at first, but we quickly discovered how sturdy these unassuming glasses really are. The Knockaround Paso Robles, Suncloud Mayor, and Goodr Circle Gs all have pretty good frames too, with solid plastic frames and no obvious manufacturing flaws or points of wear or potential breakage, even at the end of all our testing. The Shady Rays are also notable, though after a few years of wear, the woodgrain patterning has started to rub off on the bows.
The Sunski Yuba frames proved themselves worthy of every adventure we took them on.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
A number of others performed decently but have components or aspects that we worry about long-term. The Le Specs Armada have a solid plastic frame, but the hinges continued to wear unevenly throughout our testing. The Merry’s Polarized is similar, with unevenly loosening hinges and thin metal bows. The Tifosi Shwae are rather solid, with less adjustable nose pads (embedded in metal plates, rather than hanging off delicate arms), though here again, the uneven wearing of the hinges gives us pause. The Sojos Round Vintage do rather well with their full acetate frames. However, they have small metal loops on the ends of the bows that seem to serve a purely ornamental purpose, and we worry they might not last as long as the rest of the frame.
The Knockaround Paso Robles seem to live up to their name when it comes to frame quality.
Credit: Maggie Nichols
Coverage
We first evaluated coverage by looking at the obvious factors, such as the base curve of each pair of sunglasses and their overall lens size. We then went further, asking our range of testers to wear each pair and point out gaps and places they saw flaws in the coverage of each pair. As everyone wears their glasses a little bit differently and we all have different shapes and sizes of faces, coverage can vary between wearers. We noted where we found trends and glaring issues in any given pair.
The Suncloud Mayor blow the rest of these glasses out of the water regarding coverage. Despite their narrower fit, the Mayor has oversized lenses and a base curve that hugs the face, leaving less room around the edges for light to sneak in. No other cheap sunglasses we tested came close to matching the coverage of the Mayor. The next closest is the Le Specs Armada. Their oversized lenses help block more light, and they’re comfortable to wear closer to the face — though they’re much flatter than the Mayor.
The Suncloud Mayor provides great coverage.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Also notable are the wayfarer-style glasses we tested, including the Shady Rays Classic Timber and the Knockaround Paso Robles. Though flatter than some, these wayfarers have decently-sized lenses and can comfortably be worn close to the face when you need extra coverage. The Merry’s Polarized are in a similar boat to the Le Specs Armada, though they’re not quite as large or as secure to wear close to the face. The Sojos Round Vintage have solid coverage, as they have enormous lenses, even though they are quite flat.
Not everyone loved the Sojos Round Vintage, but on certain faces, they are really stylish and their oversized lenses offer solid coverage.
Credit: Maggie Brandenburg
Conclusion
There are what feels like a million possible options to choose from for sunglasses, especially when it comes to budget pairs. We hope that our thorough testing across a panel of sunglasses lovers will help you identify which pair is perfect for your eyes and your wallet.
There are what feels like a million possible options to choose from for sunglasses, especially when it comes to budget pairs. We hope that our thorough testing across a panel of sunglasses lovers will help you identify which pair is perfect for your eyes and your wallet.
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