When considering purchasing a couple of aviator sunglasses, a lot of people don’t offer a thought about the lenses and merely consider how “cool” they look when they put them on. While looks might seem being important, the ability of the lenses to supply adequate protection for the eyes is way more important.
A quality set of oversize aviator sunglasses begins with the selection of the lenses. The lens material must have a uniform composition and be perfectly transparent. Furthermore, the lenses should be ground and treated in such a way as to provide maximum protection from harmful uv radiation.
What Are The Choices In Lens Material?
In most cases there are three choices in lens material:
Plastic
Polycarbonate
Glass
Initially the sole option for lenses was glass, but because technology improved plastic and then polycarbonate became readily available for making sunglass lenses. With many choices on the market available it could be confusing regarding which may be best for you.
Plastic Lenses
Plastic lenses have become popular mainly because they’re light in weight and therefore much more comfortable to put on. They remove the problem of glass lenses which sometimes slip down your nose inside them for hours to constantly push them back up.
One of many difficulties with plastic lenses, however, is that they could be scratched. To fix this issue plastic lenses possess a scratch resistant coating placed on the lens and, if clean, will stay scratch free for a long period.
Polycarbonate Lenses
The benefit of polycarbonate lenses is that they are thinner, lighter and shatterproof. Because they lenses are impact resistant you could drop a steel ball around the lens from a considerable ways as well as the lens wouldn’t break or shatter.
Glasses with polycarbonate lenses are called safety glasses since they do a great job in protecting your vision from injury. They’re impact-resistant since the lenses are made from a very soft, pliable material; however, they are going to scratch quickly without the right care.
Glass Lenses
Glass lenses weigh more than either plastic or polycarbonate lenses and are scratch resistant eliminating the necessity for a scratch resistant coating. However, drop a set of glasses with glass lenses and they more than likely will shatter.
However, glass lenses supply the absolute best visual acuity. Visual acuity is the acuteness or clearness of vision, which suggests everything you see through glass lenses will be sharper than with some other lens material.
Live view screen Displays (LCDs)
Today we are surrounded with devices like smart phones, car dashboard displays and computer screens involving lcd tv displays to present information to all of us.
Because LCDs make use of a polarizing filter using a vertical axis the data shown on these screens can be difficult or impossible to find out with polarized lenses. Polarized lens have been developed specifically to remove vertically polarized light waves, which means wanting to view an LCD screen with polarized glasses or sunglasses is a concern.
The answer, obviously, is always to wear aviator sunglasses that are not polarized. In fact, the sole advantage for wearing polarized sunglasses happens when you are on water which in turn allows you to see some depth into the water.
Your best option For Pilots
A pilot’s eyes are their most significant asset, and pilots need to be capable of seeing everything as clearly as possible, including the LCD displays which provide flight and navigation information to them in the aircraft’s panel.
This means that aviator sunglasses with non-polarized glass lenses would be the absolute best option for pilots. In fact, these would even be the best option for anyone who drives a vehicle by having an LCD instrument panel as well.
Recommended Manufacturers
Today these leading manufacturers of non-polarized glass lens aviator sunglasses are:
American Optical Original Pilot Sunglasses
Randolph Engineering Aviator Sunglasses
Serengeti Aviator Sunglasses
Both American Optical and Randolph Engineering supply aviator sunglasses to the U.S. military, but in my experience Randolph Engineering Aviator Sunglasses are desirable to more pilots than some other brand.
As an ATP pilot having an MBA running a business, the author writes a daily blog about aviation called “All Things Aviation.” In order to serve his community the article author reviews pilot supplies for pilots.
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