Amazon's Most-Bought Beach Towel Is Affordable, Oversized, And Compact - But Is It Absorbent?

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

With summer right around the corner, it's time to start planning your next sun-soaked beach getaway. After picking the perfect beach for lazing away the summer days, your packing list is next on the agenda. Essentials like swimsuits, sunglasses, sunscreen, and sandals make the cut, along with a cozy, durable beach towel that won't bulk up your luggage — ideally one that dries you off in a jiff. If you're new to the beach towel game, Amazon's most-bought beach towel, Lane Linen's Turkish Beach Towel, is a solid pick. Lane Linen has sold 5.5 million of these oversized, colorfully striped beachside beauties, which have earned a 4.4-star rating on Amazon across over 7,800 reviews. Customers love the towel's generous size, affordability, and compact fold, but opinions are mixed about its absorbency.

This oversized towel measures 3¼ by nearly 6 feet, yet it's a lightweight space saver that folds down to the size of a paperback. It's available in two dozen colors, and while it's a steal at $12.99, the more you buy, the more value you get. At the time of this writing, a two-pack costs $16.99, a four-pack costs $25.49, a six-pack costs $39.99, and there's even a 12-pack for $74.99 — a budget-friendly $6.25 per towel.

Many Amazon reviewers find Lane Linen's bestseller absorbs brilliantly, while others are disappointed. Out of 329 Amazon reviews that mention the word "absorbency," 214 are positive while 115 — a little more than a third — are negative. "Beautiful, durable, highly absorbent. These are the only towels I will ever buy again. One towel will dry my whole body and my waist-length hair, and it dries very quickly," glowed one Amazon reviewer. In contrast, another Amazon reviewer lambasted the towel's ability to soak. "Doesn't absorb well, kind of smears water around and absorbs like 60%."

No matter which of the best beaches in the world you'll be lounging on this summer, doing so with an ultra-absorbent beach towel is a must. Fabric is incredibly important for how well your beach towel soaks up water, with natural fiber cotton being the most absorbent. "Cotton is best in terms of fabric. It absorbs well, dries quickly, and is super soft," Katie Elks, director of design and product development for Brooklinen, shared with Consumer Reports. 

Genuine, high-quality Turkish beach towels are woven from long cotton fibers that make for a thin, lightweight, soft, and highly absorbent towel that's one of the most sought-after on the market. Most importantly for absorbency, they are 100% Turkish Cotton. On Amazon, Lane Linen describes its flatweave Turkish beach towel as a 70% cotton/30% polyester blend. Polyester is most likely the culprit behind some of the towel's lukewarm absorbency ratings, as it's a synthetic, non-absorbent material that can actually work against the cotton to impede absorption. 

Laundering the Lane Linen beach towel can also impact its absorbency. Christy, a British cotton textiles company in business for 170 years, notes on its website that cotton towels must be washed before use to "enhance absorbency" and enable their fibers to "open up and become more receptive to water." Considering the majority of Lane Linen's towels are made of cotton, beachgoers who've failed to give them a good spin or two before hitting the sand are likely to miss out on maximum absorbency. However, with over 200 customer reviews praising its absorbency, this Amazon bestseller is definitely worth considering for your ultimate beach trip packing list if you're willing to care for it properly.