Zales Review

Looking at the education section of the Zales website, they explain the importance of 4c’s of the diamond which are cut, color, clarity, and carat weight. According to Zales – cut, color, clarity and carat weight “are a way to compare diamond quality and value.” And “Combined, the 4Cs help diamond sellers set prices and compare diamonds”.

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, Zales don’t allow you to choose or see the clarity and color in their product filter, although they do show this information in the product detail pages for their rings.

As we discussed above, Zales has a good custom ring builder called “Create Your Own” where you can choose clarity and color grade. You are guided through the process of choosing the quality of the diamond, 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 Zales 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, Zales 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 Zales 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 Zales offers is from 0.5 carat to 1 carat which is good range of carat weight.

While it is a diamond’s carat weight that is the biggest determinant of 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.

Zales acknowledge the importance of cut on their website and GIA grading standards:

Despite what they say about the importance of cut in their education section – Zales unfortunately don’t show any diamond cut information on their product filter or product details. When I asked Zales on live chat why this information is not available, they said; “I cannot provide an answer as to why something is not here”.

The lack of information on cut quality is a huge red flag for Zales. 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.

Zales 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.

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 usually recommendation is the GIA, although there are other good diamonds ‘labs’ too.

Some engagement rings from Zales are GIA certified, which is great. However, it’s a relatively small percentage – 501 out of 9,386 engagement rings in total, at the time of this review.

Zales don’t you allow to view filter their available engagement rings by certification, but they can be found if you search “GIA certified engagement rings” in the search function of the Zales website.

While it’s great that some diamonds do have GIA certification, unfortunately Zales don’t make the actual details of the report visible online. Many retailers link through to the actual report on the GIA website (which looks like this), which allows a potential buyer to see where the inclusions in the diamond are and gain some reassurance.

However, under the certification details, Zales just say ‘Yes’, which means that you won’t see the actual grading report itself until after you have bought the ring, which is far from ideal:

For diamonds that aren’t certified, this section is just completely missing from the product details page, which means you are relying on the Zales staff to accurately gauge the quality of the diamond.

So, while it’s good that Zales offers GIA certifications on some of their diamonds, we’d like to see independent grading available for more of their rings and be able to see the grading report online before making any purchasing decision, otherwise you are still buying a little bit blind.