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Oct 16, 2024

I Used to Hate the Beach. Then I Got This Sturdy Umbrella. | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Annemarie Conte Annemarie Conte is an editor who writes the Ask Wirecutter column and trending-product reviews. She’d love to make you a friendship bracelet. For a long time, I thought I hated the

By Annemarie Conte

Annemarie Conte is an editor who writes the Ask Wirecutter column and trending-product reviews. She’d love to make you a friendship bracelet.

For a long time, I thought I hated the beach. It turns out that I just hated the Jersey Shore. This is blasphemy coming from a loud-and-proud Jersey girl (born and raised, and I’ll fight anyone who talks trash about my home state).

I didn’t hate the Jersey Shore because it’s full of Bennies (a disparaging term for non-locals who flock to the gorgeous beaches in the summer), of which I am one. Or because of its gym-tan-laundry reputation. Or because sand gets everywhere and is so, so hard to remove from between your toes.

I hated it because there was never any shade, unlike the tree-lined Caribbean oasis of Cemetery Beach in Grand Cayman that I discovered in my twenties or the Ironwood Forest of Waimānalo Beach in O‘ahu that I fell in love with in my thirties.

Since most New Jersey beaches have been stripped of any and all shade trees, you have to bring your own cover. Once you’ve lugged your umbrella up and over the dunes and buried that pole into place, even a minor gust of wind can undo your hard work. There’s nothing like the fear of seeing your umbrella flip sideways and uproot itself to become a deadly projectile, its delicate ribs cracking while people scream in horror.

On a particularly windy beach day two years ago, when everyone else had long since collapsed their canopies, I spied a single, intact umbrella standing proud. That wonderful, rock-solid pillar of shade, my friends, was the beachBUB All-In-One Beach Umbrella System. I pulled out my phone and ordered one on the spot.

This kit has the best built-in anchor system we’ve come across. Even on windy days, the umbrella didn’t fly away.

Look, I know the beachBUB umbrella has competition. Our top-pick umbrella isn’t even an umbrella. It’s the Sun Ninja, a tent-like, multipronged Hydra. There’s also our upgrade pick, the Shibumi Shade Classic, an arched aluminum rod threaded through a spandex sheath that works with the wind, not against it. But some of these types of canopies have been banned, often because they reduce visibility to the ocean.

The beachBUB, which is a new pick in our umbrella guide, is a traditional umbrella with a unique anchor point. The most important piece of the kit is the Ultra Beach Umbrella Base, a triangular tarp with a hole in the center that you fill with sand; it acts as a weighted sandbag to stabilize the umbrella.

There’s nothing like the fear of seeing your umbrella flip sideways and uproot itself to become a deadly projectile, its delicate ribs cracking while you scream in horror.

BeachBUB said its umbrella has been wind-tested up to 44 miles per hour, which exceeds the ASTM beach umbrella safety standard of 30 mph.

Kit Dillon, senior staff writer and author of our beach umbrella guide, has listened to me yap about this thing with such frequency that he finally broke down and tested it, and I am feeling super smug that a man of his expertise and caliber agrees with me. “It’s remarkably quiet in high wind, and you’re right, it’s never going anywhere, which is very reassuring,” he says.

Putting everything in place is a little complicated at first, but after you’ve done it once, it’s easy to replicate. It takes less than five minutes to set up, and then you spend no time worrying about it, which is a win.

To start, make a flat spot in the sand and lay down the base. Dig a deep, narrow hole with the Sand Gopher Tool (a metal pole that you use to create a hole in the sand) to the indicated line. Stick the bottom pole of the umbrella into the hole. We add some wet sand underneath the base to really ensure it’s compacted and secure. Then fill the base with at least 50 scoops of sand using the provided shovel. My kids like helping scoop the sand into the base, so it becomes more like a game rather than manual labor.

The downside of this incredibly heavy and stable umbrella is that it’s incredibly heavy and stable—even when the sun moves and is suddenly shining in your eyes. There’s a fix for this, but it will cost you. BeachBUB sells an accessory called a SunVisor that clips onto the UPF 50+ canopy of the umbrella, blocking the sun while it “creates a wind tunnel effect that keeps the wind above the leading edge of the canopy, preventing it from blowing up or over,” according to the company.

I ordered one to test, and I retrofitted it to my beachBUB, which came with easy-to-follow instructions and was a cinch to execute (all new beachBUB systems come with pre-installed rings to clip on the sun shade). Then you simply clip the shade’s carabiners onto the rings on the umbrella to help block the direct sunlight that would normally sneak under the umbrella’s canopy.

There isn’t a ton of cleaning or upkeep involved. Knock the sand off, make sure you don’t store it wet, and that’s pretty much it. Everything you need for the beachBUB umbrella fits into the handy bag for easy carrying and storage.

This umbrella is the opposite of disposable crap many people have become accustomed to with beach gear. My family used to buy a new $80 umbrella every other year, and like clockwork, the cheap plastic parts would snap, rendering it unusable and irreparable. For about the price of two of those, I can have the beachBUB system, which is made in Greensboro, North Carolina, and comes with a three-year protection plan, a 10-year frame warranty, and a lifetime warranty on the base.

If anything breaks that’s not covered by the warranty, the company sells replacement parts that are pretty fairly priced. Plus, I genuinely feel happy and proud to support this company, which seems to care so deeply about quality and safety.

And hey, nothing is going to make me stop resenting sand-filled sandwiches or seagulls that steal your snacks. But every time I use the beachBUB umbrella, the Jersey Shore feels one step closer to a true haven.

This article was edited by Megan Beauchamp and Catherine Kast.

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Annemarie Conte

Deputy Editor

I write the Ask Wirecutter advice column, review trending products, and dig into product-focused investigations.

Whenever possible, I like to offer free fixes, low-cost solutions, and bigger investments so that readers can decide which option works best for them. I write about what is worth buying, what is overhyped junk, and everything in between.