I rarely have to walk far. It's only a few blocks to the store or a restaurant, so unless it's absolutely raining buckets, I don't need some giant mobile domed tent of a brolly.
I had to buy a new one earlier this year and, not knowing anything about which umbrella brands were good or not, I ran into the enshittified search engine on Amazon and got stumped. A little bit of research around the web saw me picking up a collapsible unit from Prostorm.
After six months of use, I gotta say that it was a good call. Reasonably priced, the auto-extend and auto-collapse features are handy. It's like the Microtech out-the-front mechanism, but for umbrellas. It has nine ribs rather than eight in order to add to its sturdiness in windy conditions, and that plus the venting in the deep bowl of the umbrella itself has kept it from getting inverted even in gusty conditions.
Collapsed down, it's only about a foot long and easily fits in the bottom of the tote. This one gets two (dry) thumbs up from me.
