Expensive sunglasses - worth the extra cost?

I always thought it was Snake Oil until around 12 years ago when I was on holiday and a bloke asked me about my Oakleys I was wearing. I hadn't got a clue what he was on about and he showed me the logo on the side but I said I'd paid £5 for them from the local market. He then said they looked exactly like his genuine Oakleys so I tried them on and fell in love. the difference was like night & day and on the way home I bought some from Duty Free and they just happened to be the cheapest Oakley made at £50.
I still have them.
 
SDK^ said:
Armani glasses, watches etc are fashion items. They are cheaply made and you are paying for the 'street cred'. Better to buy from a brand which specialises in the product.
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Completely this - buy a good pair of glases from a firm that specialises in glasses not a fashion brand.
 
Normally cam get Oakleys at the local outlet for $60-70 which seems worth it really, normally have a pair in the glove box and a couple pairs to swap between as sunglasses are pretty much a necessity round these parts!
 
I love my wayfarers and agree you should buy a brand that specialises in glasses rather than a fashion brand. But I also have a cheap pair in the car for emergencies or when I may risk losing g or damaging a decent pair. As long as they have the British safety mark then they will do the job acctably. But I do find the quality of Oakley, Ray Ban, etc, much higher.
 
Oakley every time. Bought my first pair of wire frames for £100 which lasted me for 8-9 years and were still mint when I sold them on and replaced them with a slightly cheaper £70 pair which have lasted 2 years so far.

Cheap sunglasses, false economy. And more likely not to look after them.
 
Oakley polarised fuel cell in the car. Person 714sm on holiday. Persol 3065s photo chromatic and polarised.

Persol are definate a step up in quality from Oakley.
 
I have always had Oakleys. This time however, I went for the Oakley polarised lenses and I don't like them. For some reason, when I look at water I get this weird shimmer and I find it hard to focus. I'm sure it's my eyes, or maybe some weird effect of being partially colour blind.

Having read this thread though, maybe I can buy some non-polarised lenses for oakleys and swap them out? They're straight jackets I think.
 
I bought my first pair of Oakley sunglasses in 1996, the same day England played Scotland in Euro 96, and I've never looked back since.
 
I gave up buying expensive ones as they are just as easy to break or lose as cheap. Now I just squint.
 
PermaBanned said:
They get lost and scratched just as easily. Your car windscreen is going to stop pretty much all UV light so that's not something you really need to worry about while driving, but even so i don't think there's much merit to the claim that they have better UV protection than anything other than bottom of the barrel chinese knock offs.
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While i agree with most of what you have written. Be careful of those cheap Chinese knockoffs. Many are made of just tinted plastic and offer no UV protection at all. Your pupils dilate because of the dark tint and let in more of the damaging UV light.
Any glasses bought on the high street would offer similar protection. What you are paying for in designer glasses is the brand name, the style and hopefully better quality
 
Best/cheapest place for prescription Raybans? I was looking at getting a pair from Cubitts where I got my glasses from, but not sure if I can drop £125 again...
 
Many of RayBans more recent lenses aren't available properly in prescription format. Traditional stuff should be okay though.
 
Like most things you generally get what you pay for, those in this thread claiming that cheaper fakes or what ever being as good obviously have never owned a genuine pair.

Imo Oakley were even better than they are now back in the late nineties early 2000's, the glasses they designed were quirkier and better made - the X metals for example were crafted from individual moulds (being a hollow titanium alloy) and the mould was destroyed in the manufacturing process. I'm currently trying to find a good pair of Romeo series 1- with the genuine lenses trouble is these now sell for £600 +.
 
No, I buy sunglasses from amazon at around $1-3 a pair, e.g. There are packs of 50 glasses for $50. The UV protection is fine.

This way they are basically disposable. I've wasted so much money in expensive sunglasses where they get lost, stolen, scratched, sat on etc.
 
Mitzy said:
No.

The cheap ones are made side by side with the expensive ones in the same factories owned by one company. Sunglasses you pay for the name and not the quality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica
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i think that isnt necessarily a fact.

a lot of goods from different manufacturers these days come out of the same factories but they're not always of the same quality or reliability.
 
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