Smith Optics: Aegis Echo review

So mostly i have usually neglected my eye-pro and mostly used CAT-eye pro for my games. They have been working really well, except the fogging…and now that they have some sort of sweat that has become some kind of a semi transparent stone.

And since my sunglasses also broke apart I felt there was a need to do something about it. So checked out a couple of glasses that my team-mate bought and tried them on. He said that he had run around a whole day without fog and then he didn’t even use any sort of chemical to prevent it except the included “no fog”-cloth. The choice was easy.

The package:

You get the whole package first of all in a paper package as everything else telling you what’s inside. After opening you find this nice “hard” bag with the Smith Optics logo on the top. It holds itself so if you have it on you you don’t have to worry about smashing it into something. But it’s not that hard that in can take you putting a hard gun case on top of it without having to think how hard you smashed it. Although the eye pro can probably take a beating.

More inside the package are the Eye pro (no shit) and an extra lens, A no fog cloth, a retention cord to have around the neck, a soft protector for lenses, a manual and of course a small Smith Optics sticker. To bad that they didn’t send a patch to put on the vest instead. Yea i know how much everyone loves to show of their patches.

The extra lenses you get have the nose protector on them. So you don’t have to switch them between the lenses when swaping them in the frame.

The Build:

The arms are made of metal that is very strong and springy. They spring back like and hold their forms really well. The plastic that holds the lenses in place is a real good plastic. It feels really sturdy and that it won’t break as fast as you try to change your lens.

But of course there are some flaws to this. My frame was crooked because one of the arms wasn’t bent enough. This resulted in that the right side of the frame comes much closer to my eye than on the other side. It’s not much, but when wearing it a while you actually can get fog on that eye. This is a small thing but should still have not been let through the QC of Smith Optics in the first place. I went to a optician to get it bent the last degrees. It worked for a while until the awesome materials in the arms bent itself back to the original bending…damn quality metal.

My other team-mate that also bought a pair of these had a problem that the arms were too loose and couldn’t hold closed or open position. This was an EZ fix by just finding a good small screwdriver and tighten the screws ever so slightly.

But if one just checks the the lenses over their quality you can see that they are top-notch and really stable in every way. They are of the ANSI standard Z87+ which means that they are high impact proven. If you want to see what kind of tests that are meant in that go to google and check.

The Test:

Well since my friend said that it was no fog and that it acctually included a “no fog” cloth (observe that it didn’t say anti fog). So my test has to be a fog test. Guessing the Z87+ probably isn’t a fake marking i will leave that testing to others who work with standards.

Anyway my test was to run so i sweat and then stand still in the sun to heat up the sweat. But of course i will still refer to the manual in what they say one should do before usage. It says that you should lightly breath on the lens and then gently wipe with the included cloth at the start of every day in using the glasses. So that’s what i did.

When running and building up a small sweat they were still picture perfect. It has high humidity (about 78%) and about 22 degrees celcius. When stopping i feel the warmth building up by staying in the sun. Of course since i knew the whole eye pro was crooked and closer to my right eye i could see some fog building up, but it stopped about half-way through. At my left eye it was perfect. Warm but clear.

So after this small test i have to give it a big thumbs up.

The Verdict:

The eye pro are really good quality in the build. But it seems they lack something in the QC and letting some small problems get through. Of course some screws can get loose during transport over the earth and they are really easy to fix. But a crooked frame which actually does make it fog isn’t acceptable when these are supposed to go to troops in Afghanistan where lack of sight can kill you.

And they didn’t get bent during transport since i had someone that bends glasses to perfection try to fix it and it went back to it’s original form. So the great quality of their products foiled them in even thinking this could have been a transport error.

So if you are planning to get a set of these. i recommend in trying the pair you buy to not get any flawed set of the eye pro.

Update!

After posting this review i was contacted by Röda Stjärnans Militaria here in Sweden and they offered to exchange my pair of glasses to a new pair. Now they fit excellent.

Thank you so much RSM! Visit them at Röda Stjärnans Militaria