The Eyes Of The Beholder

It would stand to reason that immediately after writing a column about the arc of questionable fashion in mountain bike eyewear that I would be tasked with reviewing some sunglasses that might as well have been birthed by The Terminator himself. Not only that, I would find myself very impressed with said glasses, in spite of my own antipathy toward Dale Earnhardt, Brian Bosworth, and basically everything that constituted fashion sense between 1983 and 1997.

But here we are. Feast your eyes on my ugly mug sporting this here set of Sweet Protection Ronin RIG Photochromic sunnies. If I had the photoshop skillz, I’d have inserted a Shimano ME7 shod foot right into my mouth.

So, what we have here is one of several pieces of eyewear from Sweet Protection. A couple years ago, I had trouble feeling positive about the brand based on the name alone. Again, personal bias can be a damning thing. Every piece of Sweet Protection gear that I touched, however, proved that my confirmation bias was doing a great job of shooting myself in the foot. The same foot that I am now photoshopping into my mouth. This culminated with the realization that the Sweet Protection Primer helmet I reviewed a few months ago is not only functionally pretty damn good, but is actually good enough on all fronts to possibly be the helmet to quell my longstanding grudge against all things MIPS. Sweet Protection makes good shit. This, in turn, led me to their sunglasses, and to the Ronin RIG.

These are your standard mid-large faceshield style glasses; a one-piece polycarbonate lens with a nose bridge clipped into the middle of it, and a pair of hinged arms clipped onto either side. The field of vision is suitably huge and unobstructed, and the wind protection is as good as you would expect from something that is about 60% the size of your average moto goggle in size. The photochromic lens ramps the price tag up pretty brutally – these retail at a stinging 240 USD, compared to the Ronin RIG Reflect models which retail for a much easier to stomach $150. That’s a lot of extra coin for the broad capability luxury of lenses that get lighter or darker depending on conditions, and my personal jury on that value proposition is still out. Read on.

Sweet refers to their optical quality as RIG technology, and it applies to all lenses, whether single tint or photochromic. Basically, pulling a buzzword from contact lens shape, RIG utilizes a toric lens; this is curved in both the vertical and horizontal planes and in turn offers a theoretically superior, less distortive field of view. The lens is 2.2mm thick, offers “high impact resistance” (I have not tested this out personally), and is coated with some magic hydrophobic goodness. All marketing jargon aside, the optical quality is stellar. Zero distortion, crisp resolution, super easy on the eyes.

The photochromic lens has an impressive VLT range of 8-45%, which at its most tinted is darker than everything else in the Sweet Protection lineup except the 4% of their Obsidian Black goggle lens. There are eight other Ronin RIG lens choices, ranging from 9% on up to 43% VLT. The tint on the photochromic lens in cloudy conditions is subtly rosy, but as it darkens in bright sunlight my eyes coulda sworn it became more grey. It looks rosy in the photos though, when looking at the lens from the other side. As to speed of transition, while the range of the lens was impressive, it didn’t exactly shift optical gears with a lot of urgency. I tested this out riding through some tunnels that were about two minutes long, on sunny afternoons. I can’t say the tint had lightened a whole lot by the time I emerged, so don’t expect these to be fast transition, dappled light superstars. But that seems to be about how my experience with most photochromic lenses has gone over the years. Think of them as more able to range from sunny to cloudy days, or bright afternoon to twilight, which they handle swimmingly.

What I really like, though, is the fit, and the ease of swapping lenses. I can snap a new lens into these things without leaving a single smudgy fingerprint anywhere. That alone is almost worth the price of admission. Wait, what? Right. I know. Why get photochromic lenses if you’re gonna swap lenses for different conditions anyway?

Exactly!

Here’s my recommendation: Save a pile of cash, get a set of the regular dark tint mirror lens Ronin RIGs, then buy a spare lens with a higher VLT number. Some people love rose tints. Some people prefer amber, or green, or grey. Steering away from the “any tint you want so long as it is rose” photochromic offering, you’ll be able to choose a hue that suits your personal needs or preferences, and Sweet Protection offer a wide range of lens options to peep through. You’ll still get the replaceable, multi-fit nose bridge, you’ll still have a 31-gram set of sunnies with superb optics, you’ll still get to use words like “hypo-allergenic” and “oleophobic”, you’ll still be able to nod knowingly as say things like “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but RIG stands for Retina Illumination Grading…”, you’ll still be able to also say things like “Ahhhll be baaaach” in an Austrian accent, AND you’ll have a spare pair of lenses all for less than if you’d bought the super baller Photochromic dealies to begin with.

They’re keepers. Don’t mind me. I’ll be over here minding my own business, working on my Ahhhnold voice and trying to figure out the whole arms over or under helmet strap etiquette thing, dodging animal skeletons and cactus spines...