When contemplating the purchase of a couple of aviator sunglasses, a lot of people don’t provide a seriously considered the lenses and just consider how “cool” they look when they hook them up to. While looks may seem to be important, the ability of the lenses to supply adequate protection to your eyes is way more important.

A quality set of oversize aviator sunglasses starts off with selecting the lenses. The lens material must have a uniform composition and be perfectly transparent. Additionally, the lenses should be ground and treated in such a way as to provide maximum defense against harmful uv radiation.

What Are The Choices In Lens Material?

In most cases there are three choices in lens material:

Plastic
Polycarbonate
Glass
In the beginning the sole selection for lenses was glass, but as technology improved plastic then polycarbonate became designed for making sunglass lenses. With many choices available on the market available it could be confusing concerning which would be good for you.

Plastic Lenses

Plastic lenses have become popular due to the fact they may be light-weight and therefore much more comfortable to use. They get rid of the problem of glass lenses which sometimes slip down onto your nose inside them for hours to constantly push it well up.

One of the issues with plastic lenses, however, is that they may be easily scratched. To solve this problem plastic lenses have a scratch resistant coating put on the lens and, if kept clean, will stay scratch free for a long time.

Polycarbonate Lenses

The advantage of polycarbonate lenses is that they are thinner, lighter and shatterproof. Because these lenses are impact-resistant you can drop a steel ball around the lens from quite a distance as well as the lens wouldn’t break or shatter.

Glasses with polycarbonate lenses are known as safety glasses simply because they perform a congrats in protecting your eyes from injury. They’re impact resistant as the lenses are made from a really soft, pliable material; however, they will scratch effortlessly without the right care.

Glass Lenses

Glass lenses weigh more than either plastic or polycarbonate lenses and are scratch resistant eliminating the need for a scratch resistant coating. However, drop a couple of glasses with glass lenses plus they most likely will shatter.

Alternatively, glass lenses provide the very best visual acuity. Visual acuity may be the acuteness or clearness of vision, which means everything you see through glass lenses is going to be sharper than with every other lens material.

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)

Today we are surrounded with devices like smartphones, car dashboard displays and computer screens designed to use liquid crystal displays presenting information to us.

Because LCDs make use of a polarizing filter with a vertical axis the information displayed on these screens can be difficult or impossible to determine with polarized lenses. Polarized lens have been developed specifically to remove vertically polarized light waves, which means attempting to view an LCD screen with polarized glasses or sunglasses is a problem.

The answer, needless to say, would be to wear aviator sunglasses that aren’t polarized. In reality, really the only advantage for wearing polarized sunglasses occurs when you are well on the lake which then enables you to see some depth into the water.

The Best Choice For Pilots

A pilot’s eyes are their most important asset, and pilots need to be capable of seeing everything as clearly as you can, including the LCD displays which give flight and navigation information in their mind from your aircraft’s panel.

Which means that aviator sunglasses with non-polarized glass lenses would be the best selection for pilots. In fact, these would also be the best choice for everyone who drives a car having an LCD instrument panel as well.

Recommended Manufacturers

Today the 3 leading manufacturers of non-polarized glass lens aviator sunglasses are:

American Optical Original Pilot Sunglasses
Randolph Engineering Aviator Sunglasses
Serengeti Aviator Sunglasses
Both American Optical and Randolph Engineering supply aviator sunglasses to the U.S. military, however in my experience Randolph Engineering Aviator Sunglasses are preferred by more pilots than any other brand.

As an ATP pilot with an MBA in business, the author writes a regular blog about aviation called “All Things Aviation.” In order to serve his community the writer reviews pilot supplies for pilots.
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