Choosing the best cycling lenses isn't just important for enhancing performance — it’s important for safety too. The challenge? Finding the best cycling lens that provide unparalleled clarity and flexibility to see though the varying conditions of your ride. Check out the Cycling Sunglasses Buyer's Guide blog to find more details in regards to the latest cycling lens technologies.
For example, let’s say you start climbing up a huge hill with some shade, but, as you climb higher, you ride into direct sunlight. The last thing you want as your lungs are about to explode is to be blinded. So the tendency is often to go with the darkest lens possible. When choosing the darkest lens a huge problem arises. As you speed down that same tree-lined hill at more than 40 mile per hour into the shade, contrast suddenly becomes much more important. Those dark lenses won’t help you instantly pick up the obstacles or potholes in the road you really, really need to see clearly and avoid. See the problem?
The good news is that there are good all-around custom pre-built lenses that can pull double duty to reduce brightness while increasing contrast…triple duty if you include glare reduction. First, as a general rule, I recommend avoiding neutral grey lenses in favor of a family of colors that can reduce brightness, while also increasing contrast. These tend to be in the rose, amber, or brown hues. Specifically, as you consider the best cycling lenses for you, take at look at one of these versatile lenses for your next ride.
SportRx Win Win Lens: As I've said many times in this blog, contrast is your friend. And the Win Win lens is a polarized rose copper lens with a mirror coating for a lot of contrast and glare protection. It’s an ideal cycling lens for rides along the coast or sunny days where you need an extra boost of contrast and glare protection.
SportRx Start to Finish Lens: I highly recommend this lens for cycling on most days, providing it’s not super bright or really overcast. It has a flash mirror for good universal glare protection as well. It’s a great versatile high-contrast lens designed to help you see clearly in a wide variety of conditions.
SportRx Over It Lens: This is a light, self-adjusting lens that starts off amber, but changes to a brown color as brightness increases. It’s a great high-contrast lens that’s ideal for low overcast days. It’s also perfect for mountain biking, since you need to pick up obstacles quickly and never want to have your vision darken too much on the single track. It also features coatings that repel water, dirt, and dust.
To see a complete list of custom sunglass lenses check out the pre-built guide.
For more information on lenses and cycling sunglasses, check out the rest of our blog. If you have more questions, feel free to call us up! Our opticians are here to help.
