The Best Cheap Padded Cycling Shorts for Beginner Cyclists

Quality Material 

I have sold a lot of padded shorts for around the $30 mark, mostly to new customers.  And it makes sense, these riders know that they want something other than the chafing that they get when they try to ride in their running shorts.  

However, new riders tend to be a little, well, heavier.  And the material in these cheaper shorts don't hold up, but stretch, snag and tear in the first 18 months of riding.  Sure, I've worn holes in the $50 shorts, but I had a lot fewer warranty claims by customers who paid the extra $20.

Good material lasts.  That matters.  

Good material hugs the body without snagging or bunching.  That prevents chafing. 

Quality Seams

This matters for two reasons.  If you buy really cheap shorts, you will find that they are just doing their best to get them to the public with no real product testing.  And there are some places on the insides of your legs where you simply do not want a seam rubbing you raw during your first century ride. 

If you, instead, purchase shorts from a quality company that also sells a lot of high-end products, you will discover two things:

1. The company creates a better low-end short because they want to protect their reputation.
2. The company has a better knowledge about those little, important details such as seam placement to make sure that the seams do not chafe, since they also use these tecchniques on their high-end shorts as well. 

Quality Padding

And now we get to the important - if overemphasized - part: the padding. You see, all the padding in the world won't help if it doesn't flow smoothing with your body.  And the padding can't flow smoothly unless the shorts are well constructed with quality seams and strong, supportive compression material. 

However, if you have all of that, then getting the right padding is easy.  Just make sure that you are buying the correct gender type of shorts and you should pretty much always end up with the right padding.  And, just like when buying shorts with good seams, you can "get lucky" by purchasing from an established company with a lot of high-end shorts.

In fact, you will often find that their technology "trickles down" so what used to be "high-end" will eventually become "entry-level" after about 5 years... giving that new rider an even better deal.