I’ve really been struggling with eyewear lately. So much of what I’ve been wearing for years has ceased to work for various reasons. Like, I’ve been having problems with dust getting in my eyes. So I picked up a pair of Smith’s Wildcat Eyewear. If you remember the original Oakley Eyeshades, these resemble those more than anything else. They feature a big, one-piece lens that offers a completely unobstructed view, not the framed view you get with goggles, which still freaks me out. I don’t do well with no peripheral vision.
Smith reports that the lens is 140mm wide and 62mm tall. They offer roughly a dozen different lens colors and most feature ChromaPop, which is Smith’s technology to enhance color and clarity. A little aside: My eyes are sensitive to lens quality in a way that can be annoying—poor quality lenses make my eyes hurt. The clarity of the Smith lenses can toe-to-toe any non-glass lens I’ve worn.
While they offer a number of mirrored lenses, I’m wearing a plain gray lens that is photochromic. In the photo above, taken at twilight, it’s at its lightest shade; the shot above was taken in the afternoon. No matter whether I’m doing a road, gravel or mountain bike ride, I’m always going from bright sunlight to tree-covered shade. The Wildcat starts at $215, but with the photochromic lens, they are $245. They come with a softshell case, a microfiber bag and an additional lens, clear.
I didn’t have to pay that much, but I would have done so.
Final thought: While wearing these, nothing has entered my eyes other than light.