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Before You Buy

Snowboard Gear Guru Episode 6: What Are Goggle Lens Tints?

Sunny lens or greybird? What goes on in your goggles

These days, goggle lenses come with more tints than your average Dulux catalogue, with everything from ‘Green Air Radium’ to ‘Vivid Copper’ available to protect your viewing holes.

But what exactly, past just looking good, do all these different shades mean? The Gear Guru has distilled his knowledge on the topic into 109 seconds, taking a look at the range of tints available for the Giro Axis.

There are two important factors to consider when choosing a lens for the day. First, Visible Light Transmission (VLT) is a percentage that denotes how much light will make it through the lens. For bright days, you want a lower number as you want less light to reach through, with the opposite being true for cloudy days in the trees, when you want more light transmitted. A VLT of 100% will be for a clear lens, most useful for night riding.

“The Gear Guru has distilled his knowledge on the topic into 109 seconds, taking a look at the range of tints available for the Giro Axis”

The other factor is tint – basically the colour that the lens turns lighter shades to. This is a little to do with personal preference, so we’d advise checking out different lenses in a shop, but there are also a few clever technologies based around limiting the amount of blue light that passes in order to see definition in the snow better. Giro’s version is called VIVID, but you can also find it as LumaLens on Dragon googs and PRIZM with Oakley.

Do you have anything to add? What tints work best for you? Have you ever been stuck in a storm with a black lens? Let the Gear Guru know!

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