Jared review

Jared understands the importance of 4C’s: cut, color, clarity, and carat – as they say in the education section of their website “These features also have a subtle effect on the unique beauty of your diamond. With an understanding of the 4C’s you’ll be ready to pick out your perfect diamond.”

This is all true, and being able to filter by the 4Cs is a really effective way of narrowing down your search on most jewelers’ websites. Unfortunately, Jared don’t allow you to choose or see the clarity and color in their product filter, although they do show this information the product detail pages for their rings.

As we discussed above, Jared has a good custom ring builder called “Create Your Own” where you can choose clarity and color grade, and then you are guided through the process of choosing diamond quality, although we would dispute some of the terminology used.

Diamond clarity is a measure of the number of inclusions, or flaws, that a diamond has. At the top is ‘flawless’, while at the bottom is ‘included’, where flaws are easy to see.

In the Jared ring builder, they allow you to choose only three options: ‘good’, ‘better’, ‘best’:

The ‘best’ option here is I color and VS2 clarity. While these are OK grades, they are certainly not the best specs available.

VS2 clarity diamonds are actually a great choice (but nowhere near the ‘best’ clarity), while I colour is a little yellower than I would usually recommend. H color is the lowest I would normally recommend to ensure your diamond looks white in all lighting conditions.

For the ‘good’ option they have in the ring builder, Jared are using an I1 clarity diamond. I1 clarity diamonds are very low on the clarity scale and most will have inclusions that are easy to see with the naked eye, like the diamond below with the obvious mark across the middle:

We therefore wouldn’t recommend an I1 clarity diamond, but would recommend that you seek out an eye clean SI1 clarity diamond like the one below:

As we’ll see later, a diamond like this can actually be found for the same price, or even lower, than a diamond with obvious flaws if you visit my recommended retailer and buy smart.

The biggest determinant of the cost of a diamond ring is usually the diamond itself, and Jared offers a range of carats in their product filter – from under 0.25 carat all the way to above 1 carat. The most used carat weight that Jared offers is from 0.5 carat to 1 carat which is good range of carat weight.

Jared offers many cluster style rings with 1 ct TW;

This is something to watch out for – 1 carat TW means ‘Total Weight’ and means that customers might think that’s referring to the centre diamond, but it’s actually the combined weight of all the diamonds on the ring.

While carat weight may be the biggest determinant of diamond price, the factor that determines how much a diamond sparkles is diamond ‘cut’. Diamond cut is a measure of how well the diamond has been formed and it is essential that a diamond has good proportions to reflect light; otherwise it will be dull, lifeless and unimpressive.

If a diamond is too tall or too shallow, it won’t reflect much light:

Understanding the cut quality of a diamond is absolutely essential to be able to understand whether it will sparkle. If you don’t know the cut quality then you may very well be wasting your money.

In their ‘Education’ section, Jared acknowledge the importance of cut:

Jared says; “a diamond’s cut has the greatest influence on its fire, sparkle and brilliance, making it, arguably, the most important C. Cut refers not only to the shape of a diamond, but more importantly to its proportions (how the diamond’s angles and facets relate to one another), symmetry (the precision of the cut), and polish (the surface of the diamond).”

This means that despite knowing that diamond cut is the most important factor in determining how much a diamond sparkles, they don’t give customers this information!

When I asked Jared about this on their livechat, they said: “some are maybe not listed”

The lack of information on cut quality is a huge red flag for Jared. Many other jewelers do include diamond cut quality on their websites – some have it as one of the filters on their search tool to allow you to choose diamonds that are more likely to sparkle.

Jared diamond grading labs

Diamonds are graded on four key factors – carat, color, clarity and cut – and a host of smaller factors too. Diamonds which score higher are generally more expensive – an F color diamond will be pricier than an H color, if everything is the same.

It’s important therefore that diamond grading levels can be trusted – you don’t want to pay more for an F color 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.

Jared doesn’t show any information about grading laboratories on their product filter or product details, but in their “Design-A-Ring” features they allow you to choose grading laboratories.

Not all diamond grading labs are equal, but Jared do include some good labs here – GIA and AGS are excellent, while IGI is also acceptable.

Jared scores some points here for offering some diamonds from these labs, although the fact that the majority of their diamonds aren’t accompanied by a certificate from one of these labs is disappointing.