Worth The Cash?

Oakley and similar brands are expensive, but you only have one pair of eyes and while we’re absolutely not saying that cheaper glasses aren’t worth using, we’re really impressed with the excellent lens performance of the Oakleys along with their overall fit and comfort.

You also get two sets of lenses – in this case a Prizm road cycling lens and a low-light Persimmon one – and a handy protective case that holds the shades.

The Lenses

Our Radarlock Paths came with a road-friendly reddish-hued Prizm lens designed to increase contrast in all light conditions and help you pick out irregularities in the road surface along with white lines and other markings – you can buy Prizm lenses for other activities including ‘Trail’ ones which are intended to pick out changes in off-road surfaces and are what we’d pick for walking, trail running and mountain biking.

On the road we found the Prizms excellent across a really wide range of light conditions. They’re not doomy dark and work well under tree coverage for example, but also take the edge off bright sunlight too. A really good all-round compromise with no obvious distortion.

Did they accentuate road irregularities? Well, we certainly felt confident that we could see where we were heading and never once did that thing of crashing through an unseen pothole or being caught out by an unexpected ripple or ridge in the road surface. So that’s a yes.

And if things get darker, the SwitchLock system means you can rapidly swap the Prizm lenses for the alternative Persimmon, orange-tinted ones, by simply flicking up a lever, disengaging the nose piece and slotting the new lens into place. Really that easy. And while the mechanism looks slightly fiddly and fragile, we haven’t managed to break it yet.

Steaming…

The only real issue we had with the glasses was very occasional mild fogging and smearing up of the inside of the lenses when things got really hot and sweaty on climbs despite the venting that comes as standard.

To be fair, at this point, sweat was normally running into our eyes anyway and we doubt anything out there would have fared any better. Under normal use or with any sort of breeze, they worked fine.

Verdict

Excellent, unobtrusively comfortable, all-round sports eye-protection with the added bonus not just of easy-to-swap lenses, but innovative activity-specific optics.

They stayed firmly in place even on uneven terrain and you can change the lenses to suit the light conditions too with the Persimmon option doing an excellent job of brightening the gloom when things got too dark for the Prizms.

There are plenty of other lens options out there as well including a trail-friendly option and myriad other colour tints and finishes. No, they’re not cheap, but you’re getting a really versatile, all-year-round, set of shades that adapts to the environment, your activity and light levels too.

Pros

Top build quality, good fit and head hold, comfortable, excellent, sport-specific optics, clever quick lens-swap system, compete wth case and spare lens.

Cons

We did have some misting issues when working hard, quite expensive

Performance: 5/5
Reliability: 5/5
Value: 4/5

More info: www.shadestation.co.uk.

Full Specification

• £159.00 / 28g
• White polished OMatter Plastic Composite (Plastic) frame
• Plutonite lens material
• Switchlock™ interchangeable lens technology
• Prizm Road & Persimmon Vented Replacement Lens
• Oakley Vault case and replacement nose piece supplied
• Microbag soft glasses bag