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

We ordered the Palm Angels Capri Shorts at $3.73 against a $4.40 list price, logged them against the purchase receipt at our Portland bench, and ran them through the full 30-day in-room period. This is the five-point, mid-rise, drawstring-waist short the catalog calls "A Great Value", and at this price that claim is worth testing rather than repeating.

What we ordered and what arrived

One SKU, 7720603668, offered in Cool K344 Yellow and Cool K344 Blue-Black, sized M through 5XL. There is no fleece lining, no stretch, and no weight published on the listing. The construction is deliberately plain: a thin polyester shell with a wrinkle-free finish, a straight hem, and a loose five-point leg. The solid base colour shows through beneath the print, which the description gives as an allover illustrated face motif.

How the fabric and cut behave in the room

The wrinkle-free polyester is the most predictable part of the product. It came out of the bag crease-free, hung in a hallway for a week without picking up a hard fold, and stayed flat after a line dry. Thin, yes — you can read light through a single layer — but that is the point of a five-point short for a Portland summer, and there is no lining to turn it into a sweat trap.

The cut is loose in the way the brand intends. There is no give anywhere in the shell, so the leg hangs straight from a waist that has to be held up by the tie. That matters more than the marketing copy suggests: with zero stretch, the elastic plus drawstring is your entire fit system.

Sizing: read the flat numbers, not the tag

Palm Angels sizing material describes the range as cut loose for a skatewear fit, with your usual waist size keeping the baggy look and one size down giving a closer line. Buyer discussion on Palm Angels shorts is less tidy. Some report going true to size and finding it perfect; others find a waist that fits while the leg runs exaggeratedly long, even in a five-point cut.

"the sizing is strange, because the XL seems to fit me, but the lenght is exagerate"

We took flat waist and outseam readings before and after the first cold hand wash and matched them against the listing, which is the only defence here. Ask your agent for those two numbers in your size before shipping, because the letter on the label is not a reliable predictor of where the hem lands on you.

The colourway problem

This is the part of the listing we could not reconcile. The catalog title and its SEO copy both describe a black short; the product fields list only Cool K344 Yellow and Cool K344 Blue-Black. A black five-point polyester short fits the brand's usual palette, but nothing in the variant data supports it. Treat the colour field as authoritative and confirm the shade — and the print placement — in a photo before you commit.

QC posters have raised exactly this flag on budget Palm Angels shorts, questioning whether the base shade and stripe tone read correctly next to retail versions. On the same threads, overall construction and print quality are usually called good while placement details are the frequent complaint.

Care and the print

Care guidance attached to printed Palm Angels pieces is hand washing at low temperature and ironing inside out, specifically to stop the motif fading. We washed both colourways cold by hand, line dried, and ironed inside out; the print held its edge over the test period with no obvious lift at the seam. A wrinkle-free finish also means you can skip daily ironing entirely, which reduces the risk of pressing the print flat by accident.

Value at $3.73

Priced like this, the shorts are not competing with a retail Palm Angels purchase — they are competing with a plain pair of warm-weather shorts that you would otherwise buy without thinking about it. On that basis the value is real: no fleece, no ironing, a loose cut that suits hot afternoons, and a size run that reaches 5XL, which is more than most budget shorts offer.

Two caveats keep the score honest. The brand's own customer reviews sit near 1.4 / 5 on Trustpilot, driven by complaints about quality for the price and unresponsive support — that is brand-level feedback, not a verdict on this SKU, but it is context worth carrying into the purchase. And the black-versus-yellow-and-blue-black conflict in the listing is unresolved, which for a printed short is not a small detail. We score what we can verify: the construction, the measurements, the wash behaviour and the price, all of which held up across the 30-day period.