Weight Bags Are The Best, PERIOD! Worth Every Penny
The Soli weight bags are worth every penny! I have used a few other weight bags, including 5-gl buckets. The 5-gl buckets work, but are very bulky to carry and the hard bucket and metal handle often damage soft interiors when transported, they often spill if not on a flat and level surface, and do spill as soon as the wind blows and the shade pulls the bucket over. The only advantage to a bucket is that they're easy to fill. Well so is the SOLI weight bag, but the Soli bag closes so it doesn't spill! And being a soft material, it colapses to a small size that fits into small storage spaces, does not harm soft interiors, and conforms to the ground surface so it stays upright; and being made for the SOLI shade, attaches in a manner that also keeps them upright. There are other less expensive weight bags that, like the SOLI, are made of a high quality material, and have the benefit of collapsing to a small transportable size. I do not compare the $39. 95 weight bags to the higher quality ones as they are not comparable. The cheap junk will split at the seam in short order, that's if the fill cap doesn't collapse first. The small, like $20, savings for a high quality, but not a SOLI, weight bags will have you kicking yourself when you try to fill that weight as they have only have a small opening, about an inch or so, any you'll spend an hour or more trying to fill four bags with sand or water. And the emptying time is only about half that if you fill with water; and the same, or longer if you were tenacious enough to fill with sand. You don't have the hard to fill/empty issue with the SOLI weights. Take it from this person who for the last 40 years has had to purchase at least two EZ Up (type) shades every summer, tried every type of shade with either breathable material or wind release vents, tried every type of stake/weight to keep a shade in place when the southwest summer afternoon wind gusts as reliably as the sun rises, have lost fiberglass/steel/aluminum shade frames to the wind Gods; the SOLI SHADE and SOLI WEIGHTS are the only way to go and the initial investment is absolutely WORTH EVERY PENNY.
