Snap Shades Review
Snapping a Shade to block the sun out
Purchase Price: $92.25
Snap Snap
The Snap Shade on an EV9 window
There are some things I never thought I’d search for until I became a father. One of these items was a good car shade for the second row in my Kia EV9 to keep the sun out of my kid’s face. When I began researching what I could buy, I quickly found a lack of product options with a quality that would make it seem like long term fits with the car.
In fact most sun shades are generically mass produced to somewhat fit an array of vehicles. In other words, they don’t match your window dimensions. They don’t truly cover your windows fully. That’s when I got a sniped ad from Snap Shades on social media and decided to take a shot at it.
Snap Shades is an Australian company that essentially produces custom sun shades for a variety of makes and models. They sell the promise of a seamlessly simple to install, perfectly fitted, magnetic shade that would basically make it look like it was an OEM piece. Since using these Snap Shades, I’ve found that they actually do what the company’s name suggests they do. They magnetically snap onto the seal of the window fram to allow the car window to partially open for ventilation purposes.
Windows can open with Snap Shade mounted
All you have to do is align the Snap Shade from the bottom up and it just pops into place with a little guidance. At least that’s the ideal way it’s supposed to work on paper. In theory, each Snap Shade model should fit perfectly onto the car model it was designed to be used with. While I did find the shade to be quite efficient at covering the entirety of the EV9’s window, it does irk me that it doesn’t perfectly fill all of the glass surface.
In fact I couldn’t even snap the shade on from the bottom up on the Kia EV9 like the instructions stated. The reason behind that is there wasn’t enough material to latch the magnetic area of the Snap Shade to the EV9’s window surface in that area. This is a car by car design issue for a magnetic mounting shade that the EV9 just happens to not work well with. In my case, I had to use the top bezel as the main mounting point as the EV9’s window has a lot more window seal for the top of the window. If your car has a blatant bezel across the entirety of the window, then the Snap Shade should work pretty well with it.
For All Shapes and sizes
Snap shades produces shades for 69 brands of carmakers around the world.
My Snap Shade does shift off its magnetic latch on the top bezel with normal driving and through recurring opening and closing of the door. It’s fully detached off the bezel before, but I do constantly have to realign the lining of the Snap Shade in order to keep it mounted. This is a minor nuisance and I’ve even attempted to warp the shade as suggested by the company when first unrolling them from the package. The connecting point based on the carmaker and model type is the cause for this issue. While the magnetic connection is decent in its pull, I wouldn’t say it was particularly strong though. Snap Shades just can’t fully connect at each point to windows for every car. That’s just the reality of the situation.
Snapping in the Snap Shade
Perfect Fit?
What the Snap Shade does do well, even if the shape isn’t perfectly aligned to the window seal, is to allow the actual window itself to row down to let air in. With the window rolled down around half way, air can still flow through which is nice for drivers who don’t like turning on the AC. This isn’t possible if you’re using a suction cup-style shade that needs to be attached to the glass. When the glass goes down, then the shade wouldn’t be able to swing down. Because the Snap Shade isn’t connected to the window itself, it’s possible to get the window down without the shade flying out while driving.
So how does the main job of a sunshade perform while using the Snap Shade on the EV9? The company says it achieves a 84.6% visibility and shade ratio as verified by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. I did fine the visibility of the shade to be good for the amount of sun it shields passengers from. I had no problem seeing oncoming traffic when glancing over my shoulder past the car seat on my right. From that distance the mesh is quite visible.
The problem for me arises when I glance over my other shoulder at the shade adjacent to my driver position. Being that close to the mesh makes the images through the window more difficult to materialize for my eyes. I’m too close to the shade where I can actually make out the hole density. It then makes the window partially censored and I really have to focus to get a good image of what’s on my left lane.
final thoughts
When paying $100 for essentially a pair of custom sun shades, I think it's reasonable to expect a near perfect fit and finish. While I do still appreciate the way the Snap Shades look and the job they do accomplish, I can’t help but feel like it was an overpay for something that I had other expectations of.
There are significantly cheaper options to keep the sun out of passenger’s faces that might not be as nice to look at. At this point if I were to go back in time, I probably wouldn’t have gone with the Snap Shades for the EV9. Now that I have a better understanding of how it actually attaches to the door seal, I’ll have to analyze whether it would be a wise choice to try again on my next vehicle.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees and support our channel by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
With the help of Lectron’s Vortex Plug, we finally got to charge the Kia EV9 at a Tesla Supercharger.