The Advanced Gaming Eyewear product, we unboxed a while ago, is specialized eyewear from Gunnar Optiks, an American company, entering the niche market here in India. Eyewear products are tricky, because the ones without prescription lenses tend to appeal more towards fashion than utility. Gunnar’s products fall in the second category, utility, which is focused on the safety aspect. Their glasses help better the vision, or rather, compensate for the poor vision adjustments of our eyes, in specific conditions. One of them is gaming, for which Gunnar has designed this product. Is it good? Lets find out.
The eyewear, targeted at gamers who play for a long while in front of the PC, looks more stylish than the usual safety glasses that you see. With a clear yellowish tint for the glasses, the frame supporting it, sits comfortably on the face. Comfort is important for any eye wear product to not be a burden after a few hours, and we think the Gunnar eyewear pulls it off well. On wearing, the whole vision turns a shade of yellow, but the eyes then slowly adjust to a newer white. The difference is still apparent though, as everything you see has increased contrast. This is because the lenses are basically polarizing glasses, which cut a lot of reflection, lessen the haze and make vision better. This is employed in almost all the sunglasses.
But in the specific use-case focused glasses, the increase in contrast and the overall cutting down of excessive reflections, the product suits itself for the computer screen. Gaming, as the primary use case, involves a lot of variation in the scene. These variations, caused by the visuals in the game slow our eyes down after a while, as the muscles are tired of reacting to the sudden changes the games induce. The polarized glasses will be able to cut down on a lot of bright changes which will strain the eyes lesser than usual.
Our experience was quite similar to the expectations. The monitor was easier on the eyes, but with a tint that we could constantly notice. The image on the screen would be similar to using the “Flux” app on the desktop, which changes the temperature of the screen according to the time of the day. With the Gunnar glasses, it was always warm yellow-ish but we soon got used to it. The eyewear is overall really comfortable to wear, but it’s not big enough to accommodate prescription lenses. On continuous wear, we faced a little bit of eye strain after a very long time, but it was rare, over the full period of usage. Overall, the product seemed to serve its use case well. Over the course of our usage, it was obvious that it bettered the image and made vision comfortable for a longer time, so it is good news for people looking for this kind of a product. For gamers, if you are the one who finishes single player games in a few hours, only to get back into the multiplayer session, then this eyewear product might be of interest to you. That said, this is still for a really niche yet growing market which consists of young gamers and worried parents.
For a price of Rs. 3,990, it proves to be a tough ask for a niche product generally, but if you are actually looking for one, this might be worth it. The “Intercept Onyx”, listed as the model name on their website, works as advertised.