There’s no doubt that shelling out this much cash for the new Oakley Airbrake MX goggles – which, let’s face it, are just going to get covered in crud – is a tough one to swallow. But they are some of the finest bike goggles we’ve ever tried.
The Plutonite lens offers amazing clarity and a great field of vision, with no distortion. It will handle a bit of rough treatment without scratching up easily, too – ours has been cleaned numerous times. Add to that its reluctance to fog up, and the tear-off lugs, and you’re onto a winner. We’d have preferred clear tear-off lugs, though, rather than black ones, as they did catch our eye from time-to-time, but we soon got used to them.
Oakley’s innovative SwitchLock technology makes swapping lenses a doddle, eliminating any of that frantic scrabbling that comes with the usual lens change. That said, it’s not that often we find ourselves switching lenses here in the UK, so it’s not a feature we used that regularly.
The O Matter frame fitted perfectly in both the Troy Lee Designs D3 and Specialized Dissident helmets we tried them with, while the silicone-backed strap ensured they stayed firmly in place at all times.
This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.
