The Best Hybrid Shorts Are More Than the Sum of Their Parts

Fabric: The materials should be sturdy, lightweight, breathable, and quick-drying. Sounds like a lot to ask, but our favorite pairs manage to balance it all like professional slackliner/plate spinner. While this isn’t required, some pairs will use spandex or 4-way stretch, too. Either way, the fabric should make you feel confident to go for a hike or a swim.

Construction: Ideally, hybrid shorts should come with pockets that allow water to drain easily. Usually that means they’re made of mesh or include eyelets. They should also be constructed with an elastic waistband to allow for better mobility.

Fit: Because hybrid shorts are geared toward sports and physical activity, they should have a relaxed fit to give you a range of motion. Thigh-squeezing shorts do you no good when you’re trying to catch a wave or traverse rocky trails.

Style: Hybrid shorts can veer into so many different directions. They can lean more into the sporty side, with a gang of cargo pockets, zips, and shiny swishy materials. Or they can tap into the more quotidian look, disguising itself as a normal pair of chino shorts, equipped with more under the hood. With very few exceptions, neither of these look good. In our opinion, the best hybrid shorts really split the difference. That’s why we didn’t opt for the versions that look more like tech-y golf shorts nor did we like the hybrid shorts that look more like they belong in a survivalist runway show.

How We Test and Review Products

Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.

Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.

How We Make These Picks

We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.

To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.

We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.

Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.

Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)

Production Credits
Photographs by Bowen Fernie and Natalie Piserchio
Styled by Tyler Austin
Grooming by Laramie using RéVive and Oribe