X Sight Sport 2RX shooting glasses
Sporting Gun heads to the range with a set of X Sight Sport’s new 2RX shooting glasses
When it comes to choosing a pair of shooting glasses, the most important thing is whether they are tough enough to protect your eyes from falling clay fragments and debris. Check whether they comply with Standard EN166F. Happily, these glasses do. Not only that, they also meet Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) standards. At 2mm thick these shatterproof, polycarbonate lenses should protect you against pretty much anything you will come across during normal use.
What I really liked was the way the lenses wrap around your face, giving good peripheral vision – something borrowed from the company’s bow-shooting antecedents – which guards against any debris that might come at you from the side. That little extra protection makes all the difference.
The next important factor is clarity of vision. I won’t lie to you, these glasses don’t offer the clarity of Pilla protective glasses, but Pilla cost substantially more than the £170 retail price for the 2RX pack of five lenses from XSIGHT and the clarity given by the cheaper lenses is excellent by any standards. Keep them clean with the cloth and anti-fog spray provided and you will have no problem hitting your target.
I tested the 2RX on warm, late-summer days and they didn’t fog up. The ventilated rubber bar at the top of the lenses kept them off my forehead, so sweat didn’t mark the lenses and air was able to
circulate freely round the lenses and prevent them from fogging up. Of course, the real test would be on a cold winter day, but I am sure the 2RX glasses would resist fogging even then, especially using the anti-fog spray.
The other big factor for protective glasses is comfort. Usually the ‘pinch points’ for me are on the bridge of the nose and around the ears, where my ear cans press on the arms of the glasses. With these glasses there was no discomfort, even after shooting all morning.
My only gripe was that there was only one pair of arms to fit the selection of lenses to. I would have liked a spare pair as I worried that if the arms got broken you wouldn’t have any protective glasses. But spare arms can be bought separately.
The way the arms attach to the different lenses is brilliantly simple and works well. You just bend back the magnetic clip holding the arms to the lenses and slide the arms off the lenses. It makes changing lenses so easy.
There were five coloured lenses in the box I tested. I opted for the HD Brown, which are dark with a low visible light transmission value (VLT). It has a dark, pinky red hue that helps suppress green backdrops and sky, allowing you to see targets more easily.
Overall, there is a massive selection of lenses. The High Contrast set comes with five pre-selected colours, but there is also a Custom Set that allows you to select your own – all with lens cleaner thrown in.