161 - Won't Go Blind...

I love playing in the sun but I’m not a fan of being blinded by it. To save my retinas I decided to invest in a pair of decent sunglasses, which inevitably meant looking to one of the best names in the business, Oakley. If you are going to do it do it properly eh?

I went for a pair of Oakley Fives Squared (below) but was wary of buying expensive eyewear as sunglasses are just sunglasses right? Wrong. The difference between the Fives Squared and my old glasses from NEXT was like chalk and cheese.

Oakley has a long tradition of designing and producing exceptional eyewear and this heritage can be felt in the relatively modestly priced Fives Squared. The Oakley’s seem to fit better than the fashion glasses as they wrap around my face as opposed to sitting on my nose.

But the design isn’t the best part of the glasses, that honour goes to the lenses which block out the harmful, distracting rays providing a brilliant view of the course ahead. Taking them off after wearing them for a while left me dazzled for a couple of seconds, a tribute to the quality of the optics.

The only minor niggle I have with the glasses is the feel of the materials, they seem more plastic than premium but I guess there has to be a compromise somewhere at this price.

Oakley produces a lot of different styles of glasses but what drew me to the Fives Squared was the fact that they look the part both on and off the course. In my opinion some of the more focused designs make the wearer look like a Tour de France competitor missing a bike!

So am I happy with the Oakley’s? Definitely, they work perfectly and are cool enough to wear every day. They also have the smug factor about them that appeals to the anti-snob in me who likes to rub the establishment up the wrong way – always a good thing in my book!