Hardware Review: Gamer’s Edge Glasses

These things have saved my eyeballs from a slow, and awesome death.

For the last couple of weeks I have had the fortune of protecting my eyeballs from the searing rays of radiation that I submit them to everyday via my 22 inch monitor. I sit close to my desk pretty much all day, and spend half of that time with a nice giant word processing window open. This means there’s plenty of huge white and gray spaces on my screen for at least 3 hours a day. In case you didn’t know, that’s not good for eyes. In fact it’s about as good for your peepers as changing your visine out for lemon juice. So when I got a pair of Gamer’s Edge glasses in the mail a few weeks ago, I was pretty excited. The prospect of being able to protect, and perhaps extend the lifespan of my eyes was something that I could get behind. And having just turned 28, I think it’s time to start being a little more cognizant of what I do to myself every day by being a hardcore gamer.

The packaging for the glasses is pretty unassuming, and isn’t an overly complex or fancy affair. You won’t get a hard case for your specs, but you will get a nice lint free carry case that doubles as a lens wipe. As for the glasses themselves, the frames vary in style, but the construction seems fairly solid. They have thick plastic frames, and they’re nice and sturdy so I definitely get the impression that these things could withstand the typical punishment that the average gamer might put them through. The lenses themselves have a slight tint, but all in all they fit well, and look the part. Though I wouldn’t wear them out on the town anytime soon.

So how did I test these suckers out?

I played a lot of games. That’s how.

I played through all of Arkham City, which is a very dark and atmospheric game that is full of shadowy figures, and low lighting effects. I played through Renegade Ops, which is a game that is so full of explosions that I thought they were making some post modern statement about the overuse of explosions in video games. I played through Skyrim, which has huge open and expansive and varying environments… from snowy plains, to dimly lit dwarven ruins. And still I played more games. I played some Orcs Must Die, and then I played some Lord of the Rings. And at the end of these weeks of playing so many different games with these glasses, what can I say about them? Well, I can say they’re pretty awesome, that’s for damn sure.

It might be that my eyes were terribly fragged from years and years of LCD, and HDTV glare abuse, but the glasses themselves needed something of an adjusting period from my eyes. When I first started wearing them, they almost strained my eyes, and there’s no vision correction on the model I received. So I chalked this up to my eyes being crap. The period of adjustment for my eyes to get used to the glasses lasted about a week or so, and during that time I could feel what I would describe as a headache that never materialized. Once the adjustment period was over, and my eyes settled into the glasses, things were a lot different. I found that I was noticing objects in the games that I was overlooking before because my eyes were constantly overworked, and strained. This was the most obvious in Skyrim, where I was able to see tiny details in dungeons that I was missing without them. I also noted that visually intense moments seemed to be less traumatic for my eyes. Sometimes when playing a title like Renegade Ops my eyes can’t help but get fatigued from overexposure to awesome, but this took the edge off those bombastic moments, and made it a lot more enjoyable for me. And another thing that became painfully clear after about the third straight week of use, was that my eyes now no longer like being without them. If I look at my computer for more than 5 minutes without the glasses, my eyes let me know how they feel about it, and that feeling is usually something akin to getting beat about the head with a Nerf sword. It’s funny, I didn’t know I had a problem, until I had relief from it.

Should you buy these glasses? Does your body need water? I mean honestly, these things made me acutely aware of how much punishment I was subjecting myself to before I had them, and it’s sort of a scary thing. Protecting your vision is no laughing matter, and I only wish that I had done more sooner, but I am beyond relieved to have these glasses now, and can’t imagine being without them from here on out. So I can safely say that these Gamer’s Edge glasses are not only a worthy investment but also an utter necessity for anyone that calls themselves a gamer. These things would make a pretty awesome gift for any gamer, or anyone that uses a PC for hours at a time like me, so buy a pair. Now.