VonZipper Fishbowl Goggle

Summary

For massive field of vision goggles, pretty good. Overall, decent.

Somehow scored these for $20 on one of Backcountry's one deal at a time sites, and was so stoked to get them in the mail. How often do you score a $160 pair of goggles for $20??

They came in the purple erkle color (tie dye print on the strap, translucent purple frame, bluish tint lens).  Putting these things on, they're incredible. You see basically nothing of the frame except a bit around your eyebrows and nose if you REALLY look hard. It's mind blowing. Riding with them is really amazing, you can see everything without moving your head, and you don't realize what you AREN'T seeing until you try something like these.  It's hard to go back to normal goggles, but I did eventually.  

Here's why:

1) The optics sucked.  They seemed hazy, and there was a huge horizontal line in the field of vision.  It wasn't a scratch, more like a ripple in the plastic, that distorted my vision.  I emailed VonZipper about the problem, and they said they would replace it if I sent in the goggles.  I'm not saying that's poor customer service, but the ultimate stoke would have been to just send a new one out to me, no charge.  Other companies would have.  The optics just aren't clear like my Oakleys, or even a pair of Smiths.

2) They are light, but not in a good way.  They feel cheap.  Holding a pair of Oakleys in my hands, they feel solid, very little flex, dense plastics, no slop or creaking where the frame meets the lens.  I realize that a flexible frame is more comfortable, but these things just felt cheap.  The plastic flexed, and creaked where it met the lens, and the translucent color didn't help it seem of higher quality.  They felt like a toy.

3) Although I LOVED the field of vision, VZ did sacrifice some comfort at the expense of being the biggest goggle on the block.  They're bigger than anything out there, EG2, APX, anything.  But that comes with a price: no nose room.  I felt like they pinched my nose, and I have a fairly small nose, definitely not big (as a frame of reference, I feel NO pressure whatsoever from a-frames).  I just couldn't handle it.

Overall, they look amazing, and the field of view is killer.  But the lack of quality ultimately led me to sell them and go back to my smaller a-frames, but so much higher quality in optics, frame, and more comfortable (subjective).