Steve’s Custom Window Tinting – North Miami Beach, FL
Price: $133.50 after tax for Llumar tints
Pros: Fast, affordable, nice tints, nice job, good service
Cons: Lack of indoor, Brick & Mortar establishment
Rating: 9.5/10
Overall: You can honestly do really bad for tints in Miami, but you’ll be relieved if you get your tints from Steve.
OK, so I’m somewhat stupid for not having tints in my car after using it in South Florida for almost 4 years. So, this summer being one of the hottest in recent Florida history, I decided to finally splurge on some good tints for my car and reduce my likelihood of a seatbelt burn by 90%.
This being Miami, there are a LOT of crappy tinting places. You know the ghetto blaster cars you see with the purple tints? No, that’s not some sort of bizarre macho fashion statement, it’s just what happens to cheap tints over time. you know, the type of tints you get from a small-plaza “59.99 Tints” place on Flagler, Bird Road, 87 Ave or any of the other pseudo-suburban dives scattered across Miami.
So I knew from the start that I would have to pay good money for my tints, expecting something in the range of $120-$140. Indeed, all of the respectable places I found using good branded tints charged about that much.
So, I call Steve and we set up an appointment, and he quotes me about $125 and tells me he uses Llumar tints. To my dismay, when I showed up to the appointment I saw that he was operating from a general outdoor auto-detailing area behind Potamkin Honda, out of the back of his car. This is definitely not the type of thing that you’re happy to see when you go somewhere in Miami. Thankfully, it wasn’t too hot, so I was able to sit and wait outside and read, though the seating was a bit uncomfortable (rusty lawn chair).
That said, in the grand scheme of things, Steve ended up doing an amazing job on my tints and it only took him about an hour and a half, the last half-hour being some necessary drying before the car could go out in the sun. I could tell that he was very busy, but he still managed to do a top-notch job in a short amount of time. I now have high-quality, legal tints with lifetime service warranty that were installed perfectly. Such high-quality tints are amazing value for the price, as you save on fuel costs and discomfort. I’m not sure how long they take to financially pay off, but the price I paid was well-worth the reduced discomfort I experience from the Miami sun day-in, day-out.
I took something of a risk by going to Steve’s Custom Window Tinting, because there weren’t many reviews for it online, but in the end I’m glad I picked him to do the job. The flip side of him working a mobile operation is that his overhead is lower and he can offer great tints at a great price.