Ski and snowboard goggles are an essential part of your winter gear, and you should choose them carefully. It ensures a clear view of the terrain while protecting you from UV rays, wind, and cold. You’re ready for another thrilling winter adventure with the proper lens and a great fit with your helmet.
In addition, one of the essential items of ski and snowboard equipment is snow goggles. Any skier or snowboarder will tell you that poor-fitting goggles can spoil a day just as quickly as not being able to see. Beyond the basics, there are a few key features to consider: lens type, lens colour/tint, interchangeable lenses, and fit.
Types of Ski Goggles
The most common lens types are flat and spherical. However, there are various types of lenses available. There are three basic shapes to pick from: spherical and cylindrical.
- Spherical Lenses: Spherical lenses curve throughout your eyes, but they often turn vertically, as spherical lenses do.
Curved spherical lenses have a wider field of view, less distortion, and less light, but they are more costly. As the lens size grows, the area of vision enhances.
- Cylindrical Lenses: The lens contact is horizontally flat and curves left to right around your eyes.
The cost of cylindrical-lens goggles is lower, and they perform perfectly, but the flatness can produce additional glare and impair peripheral vision significantly.
Kinds of Ski/Snowboard Goggles Ventilation
Condensation can happen when warm air from your body meets cold air from the outside temperature, impairing your vision. To avoid fogging, employ a variety of techniques.
- Double-Layered Lenses– do not fog as quickly as single-layered lenses, just like almost all snow goggles. When correctly sealed, they produce a thermal barrier that resists fogging.
- Anti-Fog Coatings- are included in nearly all mid-range to high-end goggle lenses. You can use anti-fog products on older goggles that are starting to fog or on lower-end goggles that don’t have a coating.
- Vents- are located on the top and bottom of goggles to help minimize fogging. Vents with larger openings produce better airflow than those with smaller spaces. Since, in colder areas, your face may become frosty.
- Fan– small, battery-operated fans are included in a few high-end goggles to help distribute moisture. You can also use fans with various settings to change for when standing in a lift line or down the slope.
Additional Features of Ski Goggles
These additional features will aid in your vision improvement. Your goal is to choose a hue that provides a good balance of colour definition, brightness, a field of view, and eye fatigue prevention while maintaining the appropriate visible light transmission (VLT) for your lighting conditions.
- UV Protection: Almost all goggles on the market now provide 100 per cent UV protection from all three types of ultraviolet rays— UVB, UVA, and UV-C. Remember that UV rays bounce off the snow even when it’s cloudy.
- Mirrored Lenses: Mirrored lenses feature a full or partial lens coating on the exterior lens. Since mirror lenses reflect sunlight, they allow less brightness than non-mirrored lenses.
- Digital Display: Some goggles come with modern technology that can pair with GPS and Bluetooth to display location, productivity, and phone information in real-time within the goggles.