First an important safety note: It should be understood that safety glasses will obviously not protect your face from flying BBs, goggles are safer to use, and full face masks are safer still. Safety glasses should only be worn on the undertanding that they cannot give 100% protection. This is not a flaw, but more a 'design feature'. Unless safety specs wrap around and touch your face all the way around it will be possible (no matter how unlikely it seems) for a BB to get in and strike the eye.
Please do note, these glasses are available in a varienty of configurations. I chose to aquire the 'pack', which contains the glasses themselves and a variety of accessories in a carry bag. Polycarbonate Eye Protection Glasses 2001 version Guarder's glasses are cheap - well that's the first thing that I noticed when I first came across them. I was looking for some decent 'shooting style' glasses for a skirmish. I have frequently used Oakley 'M' frames for both urban and woodland skirmishes, and saw the Guarder glasses as a good cheap replacement. I wasn't expecting to get much for my 45USD, but how wrong could I have been? To be fair it's worth noting that at this point I hadn't bought any Guarder products before, so I didn't know what to expect.
The 'dimwit' safety tests Now before I trusted my eyes to these specs it is only sensible to conduct two very simple tests. Now please do beware that these tests may destroy your eyewear, but to be fair if they fail the test you won't want them, and might as well send them back or just bin them. So what are the dimwit tests?
Now if after both of these tests the eyewear is intact, you can be fairly safe in assuming it to be skirmish friendly. Do check your site limits though, as this assumes that everyone is going to be using the same power equipment as the rifle you conducted the test with. So how did the Guarder specs fare? Well they don't have a scratch on them after I did the tests, infact it was impossible to spot where they had been hit, so there was little point in taking a photo of the lense I tested. So what do you get when you buy the product? With the pack that I bought I received a selection of 4 lenses, the frames themselves, a nose piece, a carry pack and the corrective inserts. Extendable legs: The legs of the glasses are adjustable, in that they allow the legs to be changed in length. This is a very handy feature as it allows you wear the safety specs very comfortably, it also ensures that they will remain on your head, even through the most energetic of skirmish feats. FYI Mine have stayed on whilst jumping through open windows, rolling around (well you have to do it sometimes ^_^ ), and when falling flat on my face (I try to do this as little as possible - honest).
Carry bag: So what, it's just a bag right? WRONG! This isn't just any bag, not only is there room inside for the lenses, frames, and corrective eye piece, but the area inside the bag for the lenses has protective pads to keep each lense separate from each other and safe from being scratched. The bag also has some handy belt loops on the back of it so that you can attach it to your webbing or normal trouser belt. The bag is constructed of a durable neoprene style material, the zip looks like it will withstand a lot of use, although I haven't put that much strain or wear on mine yet. Comfy nose piece: When you get hit by a volley from an AEG on the glasses you'll be thankfull of this - a decent rubber nosepiece is needed to stop the glasses smashing into the bridge of your nose when they are hit by BBs. Trust me - I've seen someone quite literally 'shell shocked' by having normal & plain safety specs smashed into their face. The Guarder nose piece is a godsend, remember that nothing on these specs is there by chance, Guarder have thought every part of the design process through. How do you change lenses? Changing the lenses over is real easy, simply carefully remove the nose piece, bend the lenses down and away from the frame (don't force anything), and remove the lense. Reassembly is a direct reversal of this process.
Guarder make these glasses for a very cheap RRP and sadly because of this the glasses effectively portray themselves as being cheap and of poor quality. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The Guarder Safety Glasses are made to a quality that I have rarely seen in such eyewear, I would even go so far as to say that these glasses are of a quality that is equal (if not better) than that of Oakley's own M-Frame products (bear in mind M-Frames retail for around 200USD). The conclusion marks reflect these comments. I cannot see any room for improvement, as the features are impressive, and the value for money at around 40 USD a set is incredible. Please do remember that I am reviewing these glasses on the basis of what they are, rather than as eyewear. As stated at the top of this review glasses are not as safe in Airsoft skirmish scenarios as either goggles or full face masks. This is an inherant limitation of the product, and as such is not a derogatory comment. If you are looking for some decent safety glasses, then look no further - these Guarder glasses are the best I have ever used. Personally I can't wait until Guarder step up and decide to make a line of goggles. Please note that these glasses were kindly provided for review by Henry Tse of WarGamer'sShop (WGC).
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Last modified: Wednesday, May 9, 2001 9:37 AM copyright 2001 ArniesAirsoft
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Guarder
Glasses?
Some
time ago Guarder released some safety glasses (the 2000
version I believe), the 2001 version is an improvement upon this
original release. These glasses are modular in design, are optically
very clear, fog resistant, and also incredibly impact resistant
- they also include corrective inserts, which can be easily fitted
with prescription lenses. Sadly I don't have a pair of the older
version to compare this newer release to.
Construction
The glasses are made from a strong polycarbonate material, and
as with many Guarder products they have tested these to well beyond
the effects that they are expected to withstand. In the image
to the right the glasses have withstood being shot at with a 12
gauge shotgun and would have protected the eye of the human wearer
(erm but that's if someone had been stupid enough to wear them
at the time). The blunt trauma of the glasses being smashing into
the wearer's face would probably put him or her into deep shock
at the very least. DO NOT try this at home folks!
Corrective
lenses: It's a well documented fact that a much greater
percentage of our friends in the East need corrective protection.
In line with this Guarder have included a set of protective lense
frames. The corrective lense frames come as a replacement nose
piece, which can be fitted with lenses at your local opticians.
Conclusion:
The Guarder specs feature everything that you could want from
a set of safety specs, they are light, strong and very comfortable
to wear. They are also fog resistant, I use the term resistant
even though I myself have been unable to get them to fog up in
use, and I'm a rather sweaty highly energetic bugger. Personally
I don't need the use of corrective lenses, but this feature of
the Guarder glasses is one that I can appreciate as being of great
use to some people. I didn't buy these glasses for all their features,
as I wasn't aware of them at the time of purchase, so I was hugely
impressed with what I received.
