Your No. 1 visual clue: good tint has small, clean edges
- To tell if a car has a quality tint, see how close the film comes to the window edge, and take note of how consistent and clean the line is. A top-notch installer uses computerized templates that pre-cut the film as much as possible, resulting in a line that's close to the edge of the window pane and doesn't waver.
- No, I'm not talking about the space-traveling robot with the built-in virgin alarm. The little dots you see at the edge of many car windows are 3D, and the textured surface makes tinting exceedingly difficult. Often you'll see film that sticks to some spots but not others, and the result is a horrendous zig-zagging line. Sometimes, an installer will attempt to fill the blank spaces with glue so it looks filled in, which might work in the short term, but is more likely to fail down the road.
- A lot of films are made with metallic elements -- think silver or gold, like an '80s limo -- to help reflect light (and thus heat energy) away from the car. It's actually highly effective and for years it was the (no pun intended) gold standard... but be warned: it does have a tendency to interfere with things like cellphone and radio reception.
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