Ecksand Review

Before we get too far into this section, I want to break out that there are three main approaches that diamond ring retailers take to sharing information about diamonds.

1. Non-specific diamond information
2. Self-service diamond information
3. A curated experience

Ecksand’s approach is the third listed, and one that works best for the vast majority of engagement ring buyers.

1. Non-specific diamond information

Mall jewellers often provide limited information about individual diamonds, often missing out the most important information about a diamond and hoping that customers don’t know any better.

Information like cut grade is often missed and misleading images of diamonds that don’t truly represent what the actual diamond will look like are used.

For example, Charmed diamond centres provides this information about one of their rings:

If you look at the information provided about the centre gemstone, there is no mention of cut grade (the one factor that determines a diamond’s sparkle) and the clarity is I1, which would have noticeable inclusions.

However, the image shown of the ring has a beautiful clear diamond. Not great.

2. Self-service diamond selection

Online-first retailers frequently offer hundreds of thousands of diamonds for sale and allow potential customers to look through their entire inventory as they narrow their selection.

This is the most transparent approach, and one that I personally am comfortable with as I have 10 years of experience reviewing and recommending diamonds.

However, this huge amount of choice puts a lot of the burden on the person purchasing the diamond.

For instance, at one large online retailer, there are 440 options for 1 carat, H colour, VS2 clarity, excellent cut diamonds:

For someone who is is not a diamond expert, it can be difficult to make a choice with so many options.

Many people get stuck in ‘analysis paralysis’ where they struggle to make a final choice because there are worried about making a wrong decision.

So, while choice and transparency are both great attributes, too much choice can sometimes make a purchasing decision more difficult.

3. Curated experience

The third option is to take a personalised and curated approach to selecting a diamond, aiming to make the decision-making process less of a burden.

This is the way custom jewellers used to do it – they would source a selection of stones for their customers, who could then review the options and make a choice.

And it’s the way Ecksand have built their online experience.

When you choose a ring setting, you are then provided with a small number of options to review and choose from:

You can also click through and choose from their selection of diamonds, which are presented in a list:

It should be noted that there a far fewer diamonds to choose from than the online-only retailers as Ecksand have already filtered out the low-quality diamonds.

You can then use the ‘Additional filter’ menu to find the stone that matches what you’re looking for.

One thing to note when using this part of the Ecksand website is that, unlike more online retailers, the cost shown on the right-hand side of this table is for the complete ring, not just the diamond itself.

This can make it a little tricky to compare to online-first retailers who break out the diamond price separately.

However, providing the total price at this point of building your ring actually seems more customer-friendly to me, as you can make sure you’re working within your budget when choosing your stone.

Choosing a high quality diamond

So how do you get a beautiful diamond? I’m sure by know you’ve heard of the 4Cs of diamonds – cut, colour, clarity and carat weight:

In the educational section of the Ecksand website, they place diamond cut at the top of the 4Cs:

This is how it should be as cut is the factor that determines how much your diamond sparkles.

Of course, the factor that most people initially consider is ‘carat; as this is the one that people are most familiar with, that people are most likely to ask about and which makes the largest difference to the price of your ring.

Carat actually refers to the weight, rather than the size of of a diamond, and two diamonds that weigh the same can actually look like very different sizes.

One thing to note is that a shape like an emerald cut (as seen in the picture above), can look larger than a round diamond at the same weight, as the weight is spread out through a shallower diamond.

The clarity of the diamond refers to the number, location, size and type of ‘inclusions’ within a diamond. These are tiny little marks or ‘flaws’ present inside the diamond and as a guide, VS2 clarity is a good grade to start with.

At grades below VS2, inclusions can sometimes be seen in the diamond, while above VS2 you are often paying for extra ‘quality’ that can’t be seen with the naked eye.

Colour is a measure of how white or yellow a diamond is. G or H are generally good colours to start your search with. Above this level, the diamond doesn’t look much whiter, but is much more expensive and below this level the diamond can look yellow (which most people don’t like).

Lastly, the cut unlocks a diamond’s beauty and sparkle – Ecksand correctly place it as the most important factor when choosing your diamond.

A quality diamond has an excellent or ideal cut which allows the light to sparkle more. For this we only recommend that you buy a diamond which is either ‘excellent’ or ‘ideal’ cut, otherwise it may not sparkle as much as hoped.

Ecksand only sells excellent cut diamonds, whether natural or lab, and this is another indicator of the focus they place on the quality of their product.

They could sell diamonds with lower cut grades, and it would allow people to hit a certain carat weight at a lower budget. However, by focusing on excellent cut diamonds rather than compromising with lower cut grades, they ensure that the rings they deliver are as beautiful as possible.

Ecksand Diamond Grading Labs

‘Certification’, also known as ‘grading’ is when a diamond is assessed for Cut, Colour, Clarity and Carat weight, with these recorded on a certificate which is totally unique for each diamond.

A diamond certificate acts like a passport which tells you all about your diamond’s credentials and should give you peace of mind that you are actually buying what you think you are buying.

Diamonds that score higher in their grading report are generally more expensive – an F colour diamond will be pricier than an H colour, if everything else is the same.

It’s important therefore that diamond grading levels can be trusted – you don’t want to pay more for an F colour diamond if it is actually an H.

This is why independent diamond testing labs are important. An independent testing lab doesn’t have any incentive to say that a diamond is higher quality than it is, as they don’t make any more money if they do.

In fact, if they bump up diamond quality grades, it may mean people trust them less, which might mean they make less money.

Retailers DO have an incentive to increase diamond quality scores, as it will mean that they can sell a diamond for a higher price.

For this reason, I recommend that you always look for a diamond which has been graded by an independent authority – my usual recommendation is the GIA for natural diamonds and IGI for lab-grown because they have the strictest standards, so you will be sure that you are getting the quality that you are paying for.

Surprisingly few Canadian jewellers offer GIA-graded diamonds, so Ecksand definitely scores some points over local competitors here and it’s another example of them focusing on quality.

When you select a diamond you can see that it has a GIA grading report:

However, if you click the icon, you are met with a message saying :”Your GIA report and number are not disclosed to protect the integrity of your diamond”:

This is different to the approach taken by many jewellers, so I enquired about why this is the case with Ecksand.

Their reply was that sharing the certificate at this early stage of the purchasing process puts the burden of choosing the diamond back onto the buyer, rather than allowing their experts to use their professional training and years of experience to make the best possible selection.

While this isn’t how I, as someone with 10 years of experience, would personally want to choose a diamond, I can see why this approach is the best for the vast, vast majority of engagement ring buyers who aren’t diamond experts.

Instead of getting caught up in details or the diamond that are invisible to the naked eye and worried about making the wrong choice, as a buyer you can focus on the bigger details about the ring and get excited about the exciting next stage of your life.