The 6 Best Gym Towels, Tested by Editors and Trainers

We chose Grounded Sport’s Fitness towel as our top pick because it performed the best in our tests, looks great, is well-made, and is available at a fair price. During our absorbability test, Grounded Sport’s Fitness towel mopped up five ounces of water in just two swipes while remaining dry in some areas (primarily due to its size).

On its website, Grounded Sports says the towel “wrings out almost completely dry,” but nothing came out when we squeezed it out over a bowl. The towel absorbed all the water from our test and then dried out at the same rate, if not quicker, than other towels we tested. When in use, we thought this towel was more than adequate for drying our heads and arms during weight-lifting sessions.

At 40 inches long, we liked that the towel covered almost every bench at the gym, shielding us from anyone else’s sweat. Some people may find that three feet worth of towel is more than they want to carry around (especially if you don’t carry a gym bag with you), but Grounded Fitness does sew a fabric hook onto the towel so you can hang it between sets. And if you forget your shower towel by mistake, you can dry off your entire body using this towel (we put this to the test.)

The Fitness towel features double stitching around the border to help hold everything together. Using nylon (15%) gives the towel just enough stretch while ensuring its durability to withstand any friction. Anecdotally, this towel felt the sturdiest when I tugged on it (the Matador NanoDry Tek Towel and Grounded Cooling towel felt the flimsiest).

Its size, price, and durability make Grounded Sport’s Fitness towel the best overall towel you can use for any fitness activity. It absorbs a lot of liquid, is comfortable to the touch, and is large enough that it shouldn’t soak through in one session.

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What you see is what you get, and the Rag Company’s Sport & Workout Towel is a no-frills, good-enough option. It’s a cheap workout towel that absorbs sweat, is simple to care for, and you won’t be peeved if it disappears in the wash. You get three towels for $12.50, which means you’re paying $4.15 a towel—not bad for a product that we think is comparably durable to our top-rated towel by Grounded Sport. The border is stitched to the “body” of the towel using an overlock-stitched edge. We pulled (like really pulled) on this towel, and it never felt like it would rip.

During our absorbability test, the Sport & Workout Towel absorbed essentially all 5 ounces of water. It left the counter fairly damp and moved the water around during the first few swipes, but ultimately got the job done. Remember, attempting to mop up over half a cup of water at once is a fun way to test a towel’s maximum absorbability but isn’t truly indicative of its performance as a gym towel. For wiping up sweat and keeping arms and pits dry, the Sport & Workout Towel was more than adequate.

We landed on two aspects of this towel’s design that aren’t deal-breakers but may turn some folks off from using it in the gym. First, microfiber often has a unique texture that we don’t love; it’s silky and soft, which sounds appealing, but also feels overly grippy. (FYI: high-quality microfiber towels should feel grippy, according to MicrofiberWholesale.com, so the note about its texture is purely preferential and not a dig at the quality of the product.) When the towel was run over bearded faces, it would snag on stubble, which is unpleasant. Second, there’s no hook on this towel. We kept the towel in our bags, so the lack of a hook wasn’t an issue.

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Considering the price, aesthetics, and feel, Matador’s NanoDry Trek Towel verges into premium towel territory. It’s ultra-lightweight, comes with a carrying case that you can clip onto your car keys, and doesn’t tug on the skin like other towels on this list did during testing. Matador makes travel gear, so the NanoDry Trek Towel is designed with accessibility and mobility in mind.

This was the only towel we tested with a carrying case (made primarily from silicone) with a clip to hook onto your keychain or backpack. Because the towel is delivered in its case, it has fold lines you can follow to ensure it packs up exactly the way it came. It took between 30 and 40 seconds to neatly fold the towel back up and get it back into its case. There’s also a clip sewn onto the towel to hang it from your bag or some gym machines if you don’t want to put it back in its case between uses.

We liked how the NanoDry Tek Towel performed in the gym. For us, it’s a perfectly-sized gym towel. For those who aren’t heavy sweaters, and who don’t like lying on a towel during sets, the NanoDry Tek was large and absorbent enough to keep us dry but also small enough to keep in the pocket or throw back in the bag. Compared to the other towels tested, the NanoDry Tek didn’t hold all of the water during the absorbability test, but that’s at least partly because it’s the lightest towel on our list at only 18 grams (155 fewer than our best overall pick). It does absorb moisture well and feels the driest compared to the other towels after 10 and 0 minutes of hanging.

The cost is relative to the market, so while $18 won’t break the bank for most people, that’s more money for fewer towels than nearly every other option on this list. If you’re just looking for a sweat rag that you can store in your bag or pocket, pick another towel. However, if you engage in other activities like hiking and recreational sports, the NanoDry Tek Towel is worth your money. It travels easily, dries quickly, and will mop up any sweat you throw at it.

It’s not the largest towel on our list, but the Nomadix Fitness Towel is a great size to lay on for sit-ups, push-ups, and yoga poses. It absorbs up to four times its weight in water (so 12 ounces) and performed well in our dry test. At two and a half feet long, it’s a solid towel for just about any activity—hiking, biking, golf, even kayaking. We also love that it comes in 17 different prints, so you can express yourself.

“The MicroTerry material is pretty smooth and absorbent,” says Men’s Health Senior Gear and Commerce Editor, Ryan Brower. “I didn’t have any issues with it wiping down a yoga mat after an intense session or the sauna blanket. It dried fairly quickly, too; after 10 minutes it was able to still dry more water.”

Brower didn’t have any major issues with this towel. He did note that the loop for hanging “is sturdy but not as easy to hook sometimes,” and that “the product tag was unnecessarily long … not a deal breaker, but it did get in the way when using the tag side and I eventually cut it off.”

Cooling towels are designed for you to wet, wring out, and then wear around your head or neck to keep you cool during exercise. Grounded Fitness’ Cooling Towel stays cold for a while, is comfortable to wear, and doubles as a sweat rag or bench cover. And with three towels per pack, you probably won’t need to buy another for a long time.

Let’s start with what we liked the most about this towel. Grounded Fitness advertises this product as a towel you can wear to keep you cool, and it does this well. We tested this two ways: First, turning up the heat up at home, followed the instructions (wet, wring, wear), and set a timer to see how long the towel stayed cool. An hour passed before we noticed the towel felt dry in spots, and it never felt completely dry before we decided to stop wearing it. (It’s worth noting that since the towel stays wet for so long, don’t expect to be able to use it as a drying towel. You’ll have to let it dry overnight or run it through the dryer.)

We wore the towel as a headband while performing various dynamic exercises—dumbbell snatches, jumping jacks, dumbbell rows, and kettlebell swings. The towel stayed secure around our head during all the movements. The loose ends will wave around your face during explosive movements, but we didn’t find this annoying. (If the towel were any longer, the stray fabric would likely feel in the way.)

Whether this towel is for you depends mainly on the type of activity you do. If you’re an endurance athlete or hiker looking to stay cool during long treks, then this is a great product you can wet, wear, and forget about for hours. A cooling towel probably isn’t the most practical thing to wear while you lift or play a high-impact sport like soccer or Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but it still makes for a solid dry towel.

Overall, anyone looking for a compact towel (similar in size to the Rip N’ Rag or NanoDry Tek) should look elsewhere. Otherwise, this is a fine choice for folks who know they want a cooling towel or are at least cooling curious. Worst case, you don’t like wearing it, and you end up with a gym towel that absorbs moisture fairly well and costs less than $5 per towel.

For less than the cost of most of the options on this list, the Rag Company’s Rip N’ Rag is a roll of either 30 or 80 towels. It’s a bare-bones towel that absorbs liquid well and is small enough to fold and fit into any pocket. Our favorite aspect of this towel is its affordability. Each towel comes out to cost $0.50 or $0.36 (depending on the size of your order). The cost-per-use drops even more, considering The Rag Co. says you can wash and reuse each towel “over a hundred times.” If that claim is valid—we didn’t put it to the test—the 30-count roll yields 3,000 uses for about $15.

Functionally, this towel is great. It performed well in our absorbability test against towels with considerably more surface area. The price is hard to top, and we love The Rag Company’s attempt to essentially replace paper towels with a roll of reusable rags. (We even used them to clean up around the house a few times too.) We also like how compact the towel is. They fit well into a small drawstring bag in the gym, and considering the Rip N’ Rag is only a square foot, it fit perfectly in the pocket during my workouts.