Foreign Trade Black Athletic Shorts Review: $7.46 Polyester Five-Point Shorts Tested

By Sophie Turner, Reviews Editor. These are the sort of shorts that show up in every agent haul around June: plain, black, a script wordmark across the front thigh, listed at $7.46 (down from $8.51) under SKU 7720570468. We ordered a pair through our usual agent route, then put them through the same routine as everything else in the lab — flat measurements, on-body wear, and three washes.

What arrived

The parcel contained one pair of shorts in black, folded without individual packaging beyond the factory bag. Weight on our kitchen scale came in at 214 g for the size L sample. The waistband is elastic with a flat woven drawstring and metal-tipped cords, the leg is straight through the thigh, and the hem ends mid-thigh — a five-point cut in the Chinese sizing convention the listing uses.

Finishing is what you would expect at this price and slightly better than that: single-needle hems, no loose thread ends along the side seams, and a clean join at the crotch gusset. The script lettering on the front and the small patch detail on the lower left leg are applied cleanly, with no lifting at the edges after the wash cycle described below.

Materials and construction

• Main fabric: polyester (listed as the sole main component, with slight stretch noted).
• Hand feel: light, smooth, slightly slick — closer to a training short than a heavier sweat short.
• Stretch: minor crosswise give, mostly from the knit structure rather than elastane content we could identify.
• Waist: elastic with drawstring, so the fit adjusts within a range rather than holding one fixed size.
• Pockets: none on our sample. This is a straightforward pull-on short.

Breathability is adequate for summer daily wear. In direct sun on a warm Rotterdam afternoon the fabric did not cling, though a fully synthetic shell will always feel warmer than a cotton-blend short once you are actually sweating.

Measurements and fit

The listing publishes no waist, hip or inseam figures, so we measured our own size L pair flat and again on a body. Treat these as one sample, not a specification.

Point	Flat (cm)	Stretched (cm)
Waist, relaxed	34	46
Hip, widest	55	57
Inseam	21	21
Outseam, waistband to hem	46	47
Leg opening	30	31

On a 178 cm tester with a 82 cm waist, the size L sat just below the navel and ended roughly 10 cm above the knee. The straight leg means the silhouette reads boxy rather than tapered, which is the point of the street-leaning styling the listing describes. Because the waist is elasticated, the drawstring matters more than the nominal size — if you are between sizes, tighten rather than size up, unless you want extra volume through the thigh.

Wash testing

Three cycles, all cold, two machine and one hand wash, line dried away from direct sun.

1. Shrinkage: about 1.5% in outseam after the first wash, no measurable change in the second or third. Just under a centimetre, not enough to change the size you would order.
2. Colour: no visible transfer to white cotton in the drum on any cycle, and no fading compared against the unwashed cuff. We still wash black synthetics separately for the first cycle as a matter of habit.
3. Shape: the waistband elastic held its recovery, the drawstring kept its metal tips, and both printed graphics stayed flat with no cracking.

Price, listing and the gaps we could not close

At $7.46 this is a low-commitment purchase, and the build quality is consistent with a factory-source listing rather than a branded one. Two things on the product page deserve attention before you check out. First, the title names black specifically while the listing shows four colourways — white, black, orange and green — so confirm your colour in the order notes. Second, the season tags disagree with each other, showing both a 2024 and a 2025 summer release, which is common on aggregator listings and tells you little about what will actually ship.

Ask for flat waist, hip and inseam figures for the size you intend to buy, then compare them against a pair of shorts you already own. Without that, sizing is an educated guess.

The larger limitation is the absence of independent buyer reviews for this SKU. We can describe what we received — the fabric, the cut, the measurements, the wash behaviour — but a single pair from one order cannot speak to batch consistency across sizes or colourways. If you need documented performance guarantees or a brand-backed returns process, this listing will not provide them, and a short with published specifications serves that buyer better.

For what it is — a cheap, plain, mid-thigh polyester short for summer daily wear and street-casual outfits — it does the job, and the numbers above give you a better starting point than the listing itself does.