Cheap Sunglasses: Are They Worth It?

We hear it all the time: ”Why should I pay more for your sunglasses when I can buy them at Exxon or Wal-Mart for 20 bucks?”

The reason you would pay more has nothing to do with making a fashion statement or wearing a recognizable brand name.  Sunglasses are worth more if they help you see better, play better, or react faster.  Here are a few things to look for:

Lens Consistency:

Most sports lenses are made of polycarbonate.  It is virtually unbreakable, it naturally blocks UV rays without additional coatings, and it is optically a great product.  But not all polycarbonate lenses are created equal.  A quality lens is manufactured to the same precision standards whether it is a prescription lens or not.  Many of the Nike lenses in their big-wrap frames are even ground with a slight negative prescription to compensate for the curvature of the lens.  (This is called “Decentering” the lens.)  It costs much more to make optically superior lenses.  You may not recognize the difference in these lenses while you’re in the store, but you will see a major difference when you try to judge the flight of a ball or go over an uneven surface.

Look-Alikes:

If it looks too good to be true, it is.  Bolle and Serengeti eyewear are excellent examples.  These are both manufactured by Bushnell Corp.  Bushnell is well known for quality camera lenses, binoculars and telescopes.  But when they had an opportunity to sell huge amounts of eyewear to Wal-Mart they used foreign manufacturers to produce cheaper versions of their best-known glasses.  These cheaper glasses are almost identical to the models that we sell, but the lenses are much thinner and clearly inferior.  If you have a Wal-Mart version of Bolle glasses and you order replacement lenses from us, they will not fit.  Our Bolle replacement lenses are too thick to fit the Wal-Mart Bolle’s.  (The Wal-Mart version of Bolle glasses are sold on several web sites, but NOT on ours.)

Scratch Resistance:

Conventional wisdom would lead you to believe the scratch resistance is a fundamental measure of lens quality.  You may be surprised to find out that many of the cheapest lenses can have better scratch resistance than more expensive lenses.  This is because the hardeners applied to the lens surface have a different index of refraction than the lens material.  This causes light to pass through the lens at a different speed than it passes through the coating.  The result is blurred vision.  A quality lens has a perfectly uniform scratch coating that is engineered not alter the path of light passing through the lens.  These quality coatings may not be slathered on as thick as the cheaper coatings, but your vision will have less distortion and more contrast with a properly applied scratch coating.  That’s why a quality eyewear case is a great investment.

UV Protection:

Protection from the sun’s Ultra Violet rays is one of the most fundamental reasons we wear sunglasses.  Promoting sunglasses with a headline that reads “Blocks UV Rays” is the equivalent of advertising tires that “Hold Compressed Air!”

Every pair of sports eyewear we sell provides maximum UV protection, but you may not find this fact posted all over our web site.  We consider this a basic responsibility, not a promotional gimmick.  Even our clear sports lenses block UV rays.

In summary, cheap glasses typically do not deliver the visual clarity required for sports activities.  When you see better you have faster reflexes and make better decisions.  Cheap sunglasses are great for ZZ Top concerts or lounging around by the pool.  The eyewear on this site is for people who rely on clear vision to enjoy their time in the sun.