I’m old enough to have owned a pair of Oakley Factory Pilots. They were red to match my 1986 Specialized Rockhopper. We all wore them because Greg Lemond wore them and he won the TdF. In the years between then and now, I’ve sunk thousands of dollars into high-end fashionable cycling eye protection (sunglasses). I’d hazard a guess that I could have purchased an associate’s degree from a quality community college with the amount of money that I’ve spent on shades over the years. I still rock high-end eyewear, but you don’t have spend a ton of money to get a kick-ass pair of cycling-specific sunglasses thanks to the folks at Tifosi Optics.
I wear contact lenses, so wearing protective eyewear is compulsory, sort of like wearing a helmet. It just makes good sense. You only have to try to get mud out of your eye while wearing contact lenses once to hope that you never have to feel that kind of excruciating pain again so I wear glasses. I like to have glasses that have the ability to swap out different lenses to match the conditions. From Clear lenses for night rides to a rose shade for overcast or flat light or a Fototec lens that adjusts to the ambient light level, Tifosi has a lens for that. They also make some baller mirrored lenses for riding in full sun situations.
I’ve switched to a rimless shield style of eyewear to provide the best peripheral vision for making head checks or executing the ‘Dutch Reach’. The big challenge for riding with glasses in the winter is preventing them from fogging. That’s what drew me to the Alliant with its multiple lens vents. Both the Slice and the Alliant have been easy to keep from fogging. I haven’t even had to use any anti-fog treatments (yet).
The majority of the time I’m riding in the woods, so Fototec lenses work pretty well because they adjust to variable light conditions. Tifosi recently launched a new color enhancing Enliven Cycling tint. Enliven Color Capture technology adjusts the wavelengths of light that matter most; making greens, blues, and reds pop with definition. Greater contrast reveals changes in surfaces and maximizes color separation to enhance depth perception. I love the Enliven tint for gray flat light situations.
Both Tifosi styles have rubberized nose and earpieces that keep them in place on your face and I’ve found that they work really well with hats, earflaps, helmets, etc. The slice is especially adaptable to multiple hat helmet layers that I deploy as the temperatures drop.
These Tifosi glasses have all the same features as cycling glasses that retail for $300 and IMO rise to the same level of quality yet only retail from $50-$80 depending on what tint and how many lenses that you order. At that price, you could put a pair in your favorite cyclist’s stocking or maybe pick the cyclist for your office grab-bag. (do they still do that in corporate America?)
For more information about Tifosi Optics visit – https://www.tifosioptics.com/
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