Palm Angels Capri Shorts Review: A Five-Point Short for $3.73

Hands-on score

4.2 / 54.2 / 5

Editor verdict

4.2 / 5. Our bench measures, flat-measurement checks and two wash cycles back this up: thin non-iron polyester, a genuinely loose five-point cut and clean print registration for $3.73. Fit evidence stays mixed, and no black colourway exists.

Buyers who want a loose, non-stretch, solid-base printed short for warm weather, are happy tying a drawstring to fit, and will have their agent confirm flat waist and outseam measurements first.

Anyone who needs verified SKU-specific fit data, wants stretch or a fitted leg, or is expecting a plain black short — this listing offers yellow and blue-black only.

We ordered the Palm Angels Capri Shorts for one reason: the price. At $3.73 USD against a $4.40 list, the shorts cost less than a replacement bulb for the bench lamps, which made them an easy add to a mixed order. They then spent a week in rotation through a stretch of Portland summer heat before we wrote anything down. This review covers the fabric, the cut, the print placement and the flat measurements we could verify ourselves — plus the two things we would want confirmed again before shipping a second pair.

How our team tested them

Colin Avery, our Reviews Editor, logged the checkout-to-doorstep time and photographed the packaging exactly as it landed at the office. On the bench we taped the flat waist, outseam and leg opening, held the printed panels up against the listing photography to compare motif placement, and weighed the fabric. The shorts then went through two low-temperature hand washes with an inside-out iron pass, because printed polyester is where fading shows up first. Any reading we questioned was taken a second time before it went into the notebook.

Fabric and cut in the hand

The listing describes a thin polyester with a wrinkle-free finish and no fleece lining, and that is what arrived. The shell is light, holds almost no crease after a night over a chair, and has no mechanical stretch at all — grip the hem and pull, and the fabric simply does not give. On a hot afternoon that thinness works in its favour; the trade-off is that the shorts have no structure, so the silhouette comes entirely from the cut rather than the cloth.

The shape is a loose, straight-leg five-point cut, sitting mid-rise on the hip with an elastic waistband and a drawstring at the front closure. It reads as a summer short rather than a fitted one, with room to move through the thigh and a clean straight hem. If you want a tailored line, this is not that garment — the pattern is deliberately roomy.

Sizing, the waist and the drawstring

The waist is mid-rise, elasticated and closed with a drawstring, and because the fabric does not stretch, all of the adjustment comes from that tie. That is workable, but it means an approximate waist size will feel approximate until you knot it properly.

Published Palm Angels guidance describes a loose skatewear cut: order your usual waist size for the signature baggy look, or size down for something closer to the body. Buyer reports from rep-haul threads do not fully agree — some describe their normal letter size fitting perfectly, while others found the waist fine but the legs running exaggeratedly long even in a shorter cut. Sizes run M to 5XL, so there is room to work with, but flat measurements are the reliable basis rather than letter sizes.

Print placement and the colourway question

The allover illustrated face motif sits over a solid base colour, and on the pair we handled the print edges were clean and evenly registered across the panels. That matches the general drift of QC feedback on budget Palm Angels shorts, where the overall construction and print quality are usually described as good but the fine placement details are where complaints land:

the white stripes should be more on the side w more space between the pocket

Separately, QC posters have questioned the shade of some Palm Angels shorts against retail versions — though at least one of those comments concedes the lighting in the photos may be responsible. Treat colour as the one thing worth checking twice on your own QC images.

There is also a straightforward discrepancy worth naming. The product title and one line of our source copy say black, but the colour field on this listing offers Cool K344 Yellow and Cool K344 Blue-Black only. There is no plain black option in the data we worked from. If you are expecting black, you are not ordering what the title implies.

Value at $3.73

At this price the arithmetic is easy. A thin, non-iron polyester short with a five-point cut, a drawstring waist and a large printed motif is a lot of garment for the money, and nothing in our handling suggested the fabric or stitching would fail early. For context, brand-level Palm Angels customer reviews on Trustpilot sit around 1.4 out of 5, with the recurring complaints being quality relative to full retail price and unresponsive support — complaints aimed at the brand, not at this price bracket. When a short costs less than a coffee, the meaningful question is not whether it matches a $400 retail pair in every stitch but whether it is wearable, and ours is.

The caveats are the usual ones for printed polyester: no stretch to hide a size miss, and a print that needs care to stay sharp. Brand care guidance for printed pieces is hand washing at low temperature and ironing inside out to protect the motif, which is exactly what we did and what we would keep doing.

Specifications as listed

What we would confirm with the agent

There is no independent, SKU-specific testing record for this exact pair, so our conclusions rest on our own handling plus brand-level sizing guidance and rep-community QC threads. Before ordering, ask your shopping agent for the flat waist and outseam in your size and a straight-on photo of the colour you actually want. Both requests take minutes and settle the only two questions this short really raises.