At a Glance

Why We Bought Slowtide Instead of Another Beach Towel

We didn’t set out to review a towel brand. Honestly, I was shopping for a beach blanket, and I’d been shopping for one for years.

Years, because when you live out of bags you stop buying things quickly. Every purchase costs you space you can’t get back, so you circle a thing for months and talk yourself out of it twice. That’s why we still don’t own half of what we could.

What we already carry

Our travel kit already includes two polyester dry fit towels and a bunch of pareos that double as a towel, a wrap, and something to sit on. Those things pack flat and dry in about an hour, which matters a lot when you live out of bags. So with our move toward sustainability and eco friendliness, we started looking.

I also own a Nomadix bandana towel, and I’ll give them credit. They make a nice product, and they spin theirs from recycled bottles. Still, recycled or not, it’s plastic, and it takes an incredibly long time to break back down. That’s the direction I’ve been trying to move away from, so cotton won this round.

The bigger gap was not having a blanket. When you spend most of your life at the beach, towels are just too small to actually hang out on. You end up with four people crowded onto three towels, and sand gets into everything anyway.

What made us pick this brand

I’d been eyeing a Patagonia towel in a hemp cotton blend, but I never pulled the trigger on it. Then Slowtide showed up while I was hunting for prints and blankets we actually liked.

The prints are the honest reason we clicked. I’m not going to dress that up as research. Something caught my eye, and for once I didn’t talk myself out of it.

After that, the specs did the rest. Eco cotton, ethical manufacturing, and a drying loop sewn right into the towel. Their whole pitch is that nice things can also be sustainable things, and that landed for us. We’ve spent years slowly swapping plastic out of our kit, and it’s frustrating how often the sustainable option is also the less beautiful option.

I’d never heard of them before this, which is exactly why I wanted to write it up. If you want more of how we decide what earns bag space, our snorkel gear post runs the same test.

The Slowtide XL Lightweight Blanket: An Oversized Beach Blanket That Stays Put

This is the piece I was actually after, and it’s the one I’d buy again first.

We took it to Aki’s Beach on the west side of Oahu, somewhere between mid morning and noon. That’s peak sun, which turned out to matter more than I expected. We’ve been working through the best things to do on Oahu during this stretch, and most of it happens at a beach.

One thing worth knowing about sand. The dry parts shook off completely clean, which is what the tight weave is supposed to do. But wherever we sat long enough to get it damp, sand stuck to the underside of that wet patch and stayed. There’s no real trick around it either, because the damp comes from your swimsuit, so it’ll happen again the moment you sit back down. It shakes out fine once the blanket dries out at home.

Do the corner pockets actually work?

Yes, and this surprised me a little. The blanket has weightable pockets sewn into each corner. We packed them with sand, and the blanket stayed put.

That sounds small until you’ve chased a blanket down a windy beach. No rocks needed, no bag corners, no shoes holding down the edges. Just scoop sand in and you’re done.

If I’m nitpicking, the pockets could be slightly bigger. Right now they take sand easily, but bigger rocks are a tighter fit. That’s a minor gripe though.

Ninety by ninety is genuinely oversized

It’s a 90 by 90 inch square, so roughly a queen. Most beach blankets sold as large are nowhere near this. Four of us fit on it without any problems, with room left for a pile of beach bags.

It also has a small leather Slowtide emblem, which is a nice touch on something that’s going to live at the beach.

What it does when we’re not at the beach

Because it’s a square and it’s lightweight, it works indoors too. We’ve used it as a couch blanket and as a foot of the bed layer.

That flexibility matters when everything you own has to justify itself. One item doing three jobs is most of the game.

But here’s the part gear reviews usually skip. It also has to be pretty. Ours is the Hau Fawn colorway, a soft neutral brown with a small repeating hibiscus flower, and we genuinely like looking at it.

That isn’t a bonus for us, it’s a requirement. If something is going to live in our bag and then live in our living room, we have to actually love it, not just tolerate it. Plenty of technical gear passes the function test and fails that one.

What I’d Change About the Slowtide Blanket

Here are my three real reservations, and all of them are design choices rather than quality problems. None of them stopped me buying it, but I’d fix all three.

The first thing I’d change

Slowtide makes packable picnic blankets that fold into their own stuff pouch. This cotton one doesn’t do that. It’s a big square of fabric, and it stays a big square of fabric.

That’s a genuine issue when you’re on the move constantly. A sewn in flap on the underside would let you fold the blanket into itself, the way a rain jacket folds into its own pocket. It would be tedious to fold, sure, but it would pack noticeably smaller. They already have the pattern for it on another product line.

The second thing I’d change

The towels have drying loops. The blanket doesn’t have one at all.

So you’re going to soak this thing at the beach, and then you’ll have nowhere good to hang it up. I’d love to see two loops on opposite sides of the blanket. Then you’d fold it in half, hang both, and it wouldn’t drag on the ground. It would dry like a big towel.

The third thing I’d change

An umbrella slit in the middle. Hear me out, because I know this one’s debatable.

At Aki’s Beach we had a smaller umbrella, so half the blanket sat in shade and half of it baked. We ended up throwing a separate towel down on the shaded side just to make it work. A small slit near the center would let the umbrella pole drop straight through, and the shade would land where people actually are.

It doesn’t need to be a big hole. Just a slit. Some people will say that stops it being a blanket, and that’s a fair argument. If you aren’t fitting four people on one square, you can probably just arrange around it or carry two umbrellas.

Why we kept it anyway

Because it still solved the problem I bought it for. I wanted a huge beach blanket that stays down in the wind, and this is a great choice. The packing thing is a little bit of an annoyance I’m choosing to live with, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

And if it bothers you more than it bothers me, this is a fixable problem. Sew a simple pocket onto one corner in a neutral color that works with your print, then fold the blanket into it. Any fabric store has what you need, and it’s a beginner level project.

I say that as someone who carries needles and thread everywhere we go. That kit isn’t really for projects though, it’s for repairs, and it earns its space constantly. I feel like I’m always fixing something. Suitcase seams, shirts, shorts, and dresses for our family.

When you own a small number of things and use all of them hard, stuff tears. Replacing it every time gets expensive and wasteful, so you learn to patch instead.

Modifying gear to fit how you actually live is the same instinct. Almost nothing comes out of the box perfect for your situation. So a blanket missing one pocket is a twenty minute problem, not a reason to skip it.

We haven’t sewn ours yet, so I can’t tell you how well it holds up. If we do, I’ll come back and say so.

Still, if Slowtide builds it in, that’s an easy upgrade for us.

Slowtide Towels: The Sunny DriftWeave Turkish Towel and the Beach Towel

We bought two towels in two totally different constructions. The DriftWeave is mine and the Haven Guava beach towel is Amanda’s, which turned out to be a useful accident, because they’re built nothing alike.

The drying loop is the whole reason

Regular beach towels don’t have these, and I don’t know why. You hang the towel by the loop, it gets airflow on both sides, and it dries properly instead of sliding off a chair into the sand.

This is the feature I’d keep if I could only keep one. It’s the difference between a towel that’s ready tomorrow and a towel that’s still damp.

The Slowtide Beach Towel is one sided

Amanda’s Haven Guava beach towel looks like a really beautiful carpet, and I mean that as a compliment. The print side is genuinely gorgeous.

But it’s one sided. The print is on the face, and the underside is soft looped terry. So if you flip it over, you lose the design. Worth knowing before you buy for the print alone.

The Sunny DriftWeave is different. It’s a flat straight weave with no terry side, so both sides read the same. It’s also thinner, which is the tradeoff.

The Sunny DriftWeave Turkish Towel in Sky Blue

Slowtide calls this DriftWeave colorway Sky Blue, and that name undersells it. In person it’s a turquoise green, like it landed on the blue side of the dye process without fully committing.

I picked this one for myself, and the print is why. It’s palm trees and coral with a genuinely psychedelic vibe to it, so it reads more retro surf than beach house neutral. If you want a quiet towel, this isn’t it.

Just don’t order expecting a true blue. For beach day outfit pairings, our Nani Swimwear review covers what we actually wear.

Is Slowtide a Sustainable Beach Towel Brand?

Partly, and I’d rather give you the honest version than the marketing version.

What the labels actually say

The DriftWeave line is labeled eco cotton and ethically manufactured. The beach towel is 100 percent premium cotton. Their packaging carries FSC certification, which covers responsibly sourced paper and board rather than the fabric itself.

Here’s my caveat. Eco cotton is brand language, not a regulated third party fiber certification the way organic standards are. So I’d read it as a stated intention rather than an audited guarantee. That isn’t an accusation, it’s just what the label supports.

Manufacturing is in China, which is true of most textiles at this price.

Why I’d still take cotton over recycled plastic

This is the part I feel strongly about. A lot of eco friendly beach towel marketing means recycled polyester, spun from plastic bottles. I own a Nomadix bandana towel made that way, and it’s a good product.

But recycled or not, it’s still plastic. It sheds microfibers in the wash, and when it finally wears out it takes an incredibly long time to break down. Recycling delays that, it doesn’t solve it. So calling recycled polyester the sustainable option always felt like a stretch to me.

Cotton isn’t perfect either, since it’s thirsty to grow. Still, when it dies it goes back into the ground.

What sustainable actually means in a bag this small

Honestly, the greenest thing about any of this is buying something you’ll keep. We’ve owned our polyester towels for years, and we’ll own these for years, and that matters more than the fiber on the tag.

Buy the one you’ll love long enough to repair.

The Slowtide Story

I don’t usually care much about a brand’s origin story. This one changed how I look at our own gear, so it’s worth telling properly.

Three friends and a better towel

Slowtide started in 2015 when Dario Phillips, Kyle Spencer, and Wylie Von Tempsky decided the towels they were using could be better. They founded it between California and Hawaii, and they left corporate jobs to do it.

Their complaint was specific. The designs felt generic and the quality fell short. So they made their own instead.

A towel could carry a point of view

Here’s the idea that got me. They decided a towel didn’t have to be a purely functional object. It could be a canvas.

So they brought in artists, photographers, and designers, and they turned something you’d normally buy without thinking into something with an actual perspective. They’ve since collaborated with the Grateful Dead, Wu Tang Clan, and Keith Haring. Press coverage runs through GQ, Outside, Vogue, and Forbes.

That’s the same argument I make about everything in our bags. When you own almost nothing, every single object gets looked at constantly. So the generic version isn’t neutral, it’s a small daily cost. These guys built a whole company on that idea a decade before I put it into words.

Independent, and it shows

The brand is based in Costa Mesa, California. It stayed independent through two small funding rounds, in 2017 and 2022, and the founding team still holds a majority stake. That’s rare after ten years.

Their packaging carries FSC certification for responsibly sourced materials, and the DriftWeave line is labeled eco cotton and ethically manufactured.

One honest note. Manufacturing is in China. That’s true of most textiles at this price, and we’d rather say it than skip it.

Slowtide Discount Codes and How to Actually Save

If you landed here hunting for a Slowtide discount code, here’s the straight answer. Slowtide doesn’t run public coupon codes the way a lot of brands do, and we don’t have a Salty Vagabonds code with them yet. So I’m not going to send you chasing one that doesn’t exist.

They do have a verified discount for military and a few other groups, handled through an outside service on their discounts page. Worth a look if you qualify. Beyond that, here’s what actually saves you money.

What actually saves you money

Sign up for their emails or texts first. That gets you free shipping, and on a 90 by 90 blanket shipping isn’t nothing.

Then time it. Towels and blankets aren’t urgent purchases, so there’s no reason to pay full price in a week when nothing is running. Wait for a sale and buy the blanket then.

Where to buy

Buy directly from Slowtide.co. Their products turn up at some other retailers too, but the color and print selection is widest on their own site, and that’s where we bought all three of ours.

If you want everything we’ve negotiated across brands in one place, our discount codes hub has the running list.

What We Haven’t Tested Yet

We’ve had these through one full beach day, so I’m not going to pretend we know how they age.

Here’s what’s still unknown. We haven’t run them through enough wash cycles to speak to pilling, shrinkage, or fading. We haven’t tested how the tassels hold up over time, though I could see them snagging eventually. And we haven’t put the blanket through a long haul trip yet, which is where the packing complaint will really get tested. I keep thinking about sewing a pouch onto it, so we’ll see if I get around to that.

If they change once we’ve got a season on them, we’ll say so here. That’s how we handle gear reviews, and it’s why our Space-A packing guide reflects what actually survived rather than what looked good on day one.

Would I Buy It Again?

Yes, and I’d buy the blanket first.

I’m a dad in a family of four that travels full time, and I’d spent years wanting one big beach blanket that actually stays down instead of four towels that don’t. The corner pockets solved that on the first try. The towels earned their place through the drying loop, which sounds minor until you’ve hung a wet towel in a hotel bathroom for the hundredth time.

And it passed the test that knocks out most gear. It’s beautiful. We like having it at the beach and we like having it on the couch, which is the only way a single item survives in a bag this small. But I would like to see a cotton and hemp blended fabric in the future, like the Patagonia towel I was eyeing.

The reservation stands. Slowtide already knows how to build a packable blanket, and they didn’t do it here. Add the stuff pouch and two hang loops and this becomes an easy recommendation with no asterisk.

This is what one honest beach day looked like. If a full season of use changes our mind, you’ll hear about it here.

Shop the three pieces we bought here, and see the rest of what we use in the water in our snorkel gear guide.