Best beach chairs 2025: From flat-out lounging to most portable
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Whether you have your out of office on, classes are out or you are making the most of your hard-earned retirement, there's nothing quite like a beach day, especially if you've got a comfortable beach chair to relax on.
On the other hand, if you have to lug a heavy, uncomfortable rusty old chair across the sand you may ending up feeling like you should have stayed home.
Leave picking the ideal beach chairs to us, so you can get back to worrying about the weather forecast.
Best beach chairs 2025
- Best overall: Shibumi chair
- Best alternative: Yeti Hondo
- Prestige pick: Shorebird chair
- Best budget beach chair: Tommy Bahama 5 position beach chair
- Best lay flat beach chair: Ostrich 3N1
- Best tall beach chair: Sunflow Tall Sand Dune chair
- Best beach chair with storage: Lido the chair
How we test
To ensure you're getting the right product for your needs, we judge beach chairs on more than just their spec sheets. We put each chair through a rigorous process of tests including confirming the dimensions of the chair both when in use and when folded, so you can be sure it will fit in your car. We also put each chair through everyday use, trying it out for ourselves at the beach - it’s a tough job but someone has to do it.
We test how easy it is to setup and fold up, carry with any included straps, and pack into a car or store between trips. We test the material for comfort, durability and how easy it is to clean from sand or other messes it may suffer in the line of duty. Using a panel of testers ranging in ages from 6 to 73, we look for which gets the consensus vote, as well as which appeal more to specific users.
Why trust us
The Daily Mail Buyline team has many decades of experience reviewing all kinds of consumer goods and Tim has been professionally testing products since 2008. We create honest, detailed product reviews so you can be confident you are buying the highest quality and best value options available.
Best Beach Chairs 2025
1. Best overall: Shibumi Chair
Shibumi started life making its Shibumi Shade, a rather ingenious wind assisted beach shade, so I was excited by what they might bring to the beach chair market. While it isn’t quite the game changing solution they brought to beach umbrellas, what they have done is refine the concept and deliver an excellent product, without hugely inflating the cost.
It includes a drink and ‘essentials’ holder (a phone and ereader will fit nicely) that clip onto the legs of the chair. This means you can switch them to your preferred side and presumably would be able to change them for other accessories - although currently there are no others available to purchase.
2. Best alternative: Yeti Hondo
There’s no getting around it, the Yeti Hondo is an expensive beach chair, but then you use it and you start to understand why. Spending $300 on a beach chair won’t be for everyone, and if I’m honest I’m not sure there is a way I could justify spending that much when something like the Shibumi chair is available for close to half the price, but it is a great chair.
Cleaning it after packup is a little bit more involved than some chairs as the material can hold a bit of sand, although just brushing it with your hand generally clears the majority of it.
It comes with a very generously sized drinks holder capable of holding one of Yeti's insulated bottles. This is a particular draw if your preferred vessel is the kind that is just a little too wide to fit comfortably in the average cup holder. This can be unclipped from the frame and there are also slots for attaching other accessories including a dry bag and a gear case.
Read our full review of the Yeti Hondo.
3. Prestige pick: Shorebird chair
If you thought the Yeti was expensive, the Shorebird here makes it look reasonable.
Shorebird refers to it as a premium outdoor chair, and maybe the price will be justifiable if you use it as a piece of garden furniture that you can also fold up and take to the beach, but I fear for most people it will be a little too aspirational.
4. Best budget beach chair: Tommy Bahama
4. Best sunbathing beach chair: Ostrich 3N1 chair
The Ostrich 3N1 chair fully reclined
5. Best tall beach chair: Sunflow Tall Sand Dune chair
6. Best beach chair with storage: Lido the chair
FAQS
What's the best material for a beach chair?
This will often be down to personal preference but some materials are particularly popular. Frames of beach chairs are often made from aluminum, although some premium models can be made from wood. Seat fabrics often are polyester materials to make them resistant to water damage, although some newer chairs use breathable, mesh-like fabrics that are strong and recorded better comfort scores in our tests.
How much weight can a beach chair support?
This will depend on the model of beach chair, with some rated to support a lot more weight than others depending on the fabric used and strength of the frame. The strongest chair in our tests was the Yeti Hondo, capable of supporting weights of up to 350 lbs.
Why are Tommy Bahama beach chairs so popular?
The short answer is they are good, reasonably priced and convenient chairs - as well as available in a wide variety of vivid colors. While they didn't top our tests in terms of comfort, the lightweight construction and backpack straps make them convenient and they are well-priced.
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