My Review: Wellvisors Wind / Rain Deflectors on a 2004 Prius

Hi Priuschat people!

I love Priuschat and I wanted to share my review that I posted also on Amazon. I think that for anyone looking for a Wind/Rain deflector could benefit from this review and I havn't found anything on Priuschat yet about Wellvisors so here we go. Also, I'm not paid by the company anything more than a $5 rebate and their thanks for any honest feedback about their product, so I'm only doing this to help others that are looking for a quality product at an affordable price, because hey - I like what they're doing so thought I'd share.....

Wellvisors Review on a 2004 Toyota Prius

I was looking for some wind deflectors for my Prius as the sun gets really hot here in Hawaii and having a car without tint or wind/rain deflectors is like running around in Minnesota during the winter without long underwear….ah yes, it’s good to be in Hawaii.

Anyways, I was looking for an affordable set of wind/rain deflectors and I found a popular brand of deflectors online right away that many Prius owners had purchased. They seemed to have a nice product but at $99 for a set plus $40 shipping to Hawaii, it seemed pretty expensive, so I kept looking for another possibility. There were cheaper alternatives, but some of were very cheap, but owners were complaining of them flying off at highway speeds being left on the side of the road somewhere back!

After trying to find something not “cheap” but not exactly the “most expensive” I stumbled upon Wellvisors which aren’t as well known but I found a few reviews where people were really happy about the quality 3M adhesive and the simple clips that were easy to install and talked about the sturdiness of the visors.

I found them for $46 + free shipping and when they arrived they even offered me a $5 rebate for any review, good OR bad! That’s a pretty amazing deal, if they were good visors. In fact it would be less than 1/3 the price of the popular brand I had first looked at.

And after installing them, I was VERY impressed with the quality and the easy installation (took 20 minutes and I was going slow and carefully). The videos they have both on their website and on Youtube make it absolutely a simple task to install. No genius required.

I’ve used them now in the rain and down the road and I must say that, I’m very happy with these deflectors. One thing I noticed is that they are very low profile, which makes the Prius look really cool, however on my wife’s car, she has really wide and deep wind deflectors which are actually much more practical when leaving the car to sit in the sun, however what I’ve noticed is that there is no manufacturer that makes a really wide fitted deflector for the Prius, they’re all low profile so I’m getting as good as anything out there at this time!

Because of the design of the Prius, the rear window when rolled down even a small amount creates an gap, an opening even when just partially cracked that allows rain to get through the side of the window. This is not the fault of the Wellvisors as all the wind deflectors out there do not cover this part of the car, this is just a problem with the construction of the window, so really if I want to keep my car ventilated safely without risking rain getting in, I can only crack the front windows safely. So that leaves only the front windows that I can safely while parked roll down a small amount (due to the low profile nature of all the Prius wind deflectors). And it works….the car gets very hot inside, but thanks to the cracked windows it’s not as bad and if I’m parked on a sunny day, I can safely crack them all easily.

If there was anything I could say that was wrong with these deflectors (to be nit picky) I could only say that the rear deflectors are a tiny bit short of the rear door. They still protect completely along the entire length of the door but they are short about a centimeter of where they could extend to. Again, this is barely noticeable and only someone installing them along the door would really even take the time to notice this. Also the installation clips leave a very small bump on the outside of the visor which is not a very big deal but it is something that some brands don’t have. Again, barely noticeable and not a big deal to me.

All in all, I love my purchase of these Wellvisors. The Prius’ shape makes it very aerodynamic but also a little bit vulnerable to water getting inside. Having these visors on gives me another layer of protection both parked and driving down the road and I feel I got a great deal on them and am actually quite pleased to write this review for the company (which did not pay me anything more than a $5 rebate to give them feedback so they can improve their products….awesome!)

I hope this review helps others out there!

 

Yeah, they have two clips per door that are really simple to hook into the door with the window down. The tutorial on Youtube gives you a good idea how it works. I was going down the highway through pouring rain and had all windows down a few centimeters below the visor/deflector and not much if any rain came inside the car allowing a nice amount of air into the car. This is pretty amazing because the top of the window/door is so slanted at the top making more vulnerable to water than a boxy shaped car (like my wife's CRV).

Again, I would probably just run the A/C and close the windows if my A/C was working but I'm still in the process of fixing it and the weather here has been crazy hot because of El Nino so any amount of lowering the windows has helped me alot. And parked in the parking lot my car doesn't become an oven which I'm sure the traction battery appreciates. So yeah, it's a great cheap upgrade for me and I think it adds a nice looking appeal to the car. Now for a tint job.......

 

Nah, quiet and no noticeable MPG affects.