Vuarnet Grey Polar Sunglasses Lens Review
The Vuarnet Grey Polar is a calm, very dark, very well-made grey lens that leans a little blue. It works best in full sun and colorful surroundings, and it gives you back a cooled-down, relaxed version of what you are looking at. If you have worn something like the Maui Jim Neutral Grey and found it louder than you wanted, this is the opposite approach to the same tint.
Check it out here on Vuarnet's website.
If you want to know more about how grey lenses work, click here.
In This Review
Lens Specs | Vuarnet Grey Polar |
Technology | NPE Filter |
Lens Color | Grey |
Mirror Color | None |
VLT | 12% |
ABBE | 58 |
Coatings | Anti-reflective, Scratch-resistant, Oleophobic, Hydrophobic, UV, Infrared, and Blue-Light blocking |
Material | Glass |
Weight | Heavy |
Scratch Resistance | High |
Prescription Available | Yes |
3 |
The material quality here is not in question. Vuarnet glass is as good as glass gets. The coating package is complete, and it behaves the way a premium coating package should. Water beads off, oil wipes away without smearing, and the anti-reflective layer does its job as well as any other.
There is no mirror on this lens, which means there is less vulnerability to scratches.
There are versions of this lens with a mirror, the Greylynx and Grey Polarlynx lenses. I explain the differences between those types of lenses here.
12% VLT puts this in lens category 3. For a reference point, the Randolph American Grey sits at 15%. Going from 15% to 12% is a fifth less light (relatively) reaching your eye, and at the bottom end of the scale that difference is obvious the second you step out of the sun. This is a lens built for the brightest part of the day.
Each Vuarnet lens is engraved with the "V on ski" hallmark, guaranteeing its authenticity. They used to have the V on the top middle of the lenses, newer versions are at the top corners.
It is relatively heavy. Glass lenses usually are. I have mine in the 1622, which is now sold as the Belvedere 02, and that frame carries the weight well and looks classy doing it. The Belvedere 02 no longer has a Grey Polar option, but does have Grey Polarlynx and Pure Grey.
Is it eligible for prescription?
Yes, even in glass. Vuarnet has more details on this page.
You can also get RX for Vuarnet from SportRx using SportRx lenses. Use code SCIENCE10 for $10 off.
Also check out: Best Sunglasses Cases, Storage, and Travel Cases
How does the lens look?
From the front, it is a regular dark grey.
The back has a blue shine from the anti-reflective coating. The tint you see looking at the back of the lens is grey, but it leans blue, more on that below.
What does the view look like?
This is a category 3 lens and it feels like one.
The character of it is "cool" for a grey lens. It is not a pure neutral grey, it leans blue, though nowhere near as far as the Vuarnet Blue Polar does. Blues come through clean and crisp, and greens and reds get pulled back just a little. Not washed out, just calmed down, sitting slightly quieter than they do with your eyes. Contrast is an interesting balance, because the blue hue dulls color slightly while the color enhancing they added to this lens works to lift them back up. This lens is not trying to separate objects for you or pop a hillside into three distinct shades of green. It's about comfort in bright sun.
The technology is Vuarnet's NPE Filter, which is a set of minerals baked into the glass itself to enhance colors. NPE stands for the minerals used. Vuarnet asked me not to publish which ones, so I am not going to. What they do is add a bit of crispness and color to the lens, and the filter is only used on the Grey and Blue lenses they make. Whatever the NPE filter is doing, it is subtle. You are not going to put these on and have a color enhancement moment the way you would with some other brands. What you get is a grey that looks a little more alive than a plain grey and a lot more relaxed than a color-enhancing one. Like I said, an interesting balance.
Sunny Conditions
These photos are what Vuarnet and I have used to show the view. Keep in mind that photos will never look as good as the real view looking through the sunglasses with your own eyes.
Interested in experiencing the Grey Polar lens for yourself? Check it out from Vuarnet here.
This is from Vuarnet's website. As far as grey lenses go, this is accurate enough.
Here is my simulation of how the lens looks: no lens vs Vuarnet Grey Polar vs regular grey:
In hard, direct, unpleasant sun, the Grey Polar is comfortable in a way that takes the edge off the entire scene. The polarization kills the reflected glare, the 12% handles the raw brightness, and the slight blue lean cools everything down while also keeping blues like the sky very soft and pleasant.
The best way I can describe it is relaxing. Standing somewhere bright and colorful, the lens tones the whole scene down a notch instead of amplifying it. I tried to show the difference between this grey and a normal high-quality grey lens. You might have to switch between the pictures a few times to see the difference. I think the Vuarnet has a "crispness" to it, even as it loses some color vibrancy. Maybe it's just me, but I get a early summer morning vibe with this lens, like when the sun is low and you don't need sunglasses when facing away from it, and everything is illuminated and bright while easy to look at. It sort of has that color profile to me.
Personally, I usually want more color and more vibrancy than this lens has. But this strikes a nice balance, and I do find myself taking these out in bright sun more than many other grey lenses. It has a different and distinct feel to it, which is not typical for a grey lens. If you are light sensitive, this might be the most comfortable grey you try, not because of the 12% VLT, which is low but not as low as some other greys, but because of the more relaxed colors.
Cloudy Conditions
For cloudy conditions, skip this. 12% VLT with low contrast and a slight blue lean is close to the worst combination you can wear on an overcast day. Everything goes flat and dim, and the blue lean actively works against you when the light is already cool and there is not much color to work with.
Put the same scene behind a brown lens and you get contrast back, you get warmth back, and you can actually see the separation between things. With the Grey Polar on a grey day, I would rather have no sunglasses at all. That is not a knock, it is just what a dark neutral grey is.
Optimal and Suboptimal Viewing Conditions
Optimal is bright sun in a colorful place. When I travel to Phoenix for work, the desert southwest, anywhere the sun is punishing, and the ground is bright. Sun on water is excellent too, the polarization is doing real work there and the comfort holds up all day, though for fishing specifically I would still want a lens that gives me more color to read the water with.
Bright winter and snow works better than you might guess. The darkness is welcome with all that reflected light, and it holds up fine, but a rose lens will give you more color and more definition in the snow than this does.
Suboptimal is anything overcast, anything at dusk, and anything in heavy shade. At low light, this is unusable.
Driving is where I want to be specific, because grey polarized glass in the low teens is what a lot of people reach for in the car and it is too dark most of the time. This lens is fine for driving into hard afternoon sun on an open highway. It is not ideal for a tree-lined road, an overcast commute, tunnels, or anything approaching dusk, and it will be genuinely dark going from bright sun into a parking garage. More on that here.
Sports
No. There are two reasons and either one is enough on its own.
The first is the glass. If there is any chance of an impact to your face in the activity, do not wear glass. That covers basketball, any ball sport, cycling in traffic, and anything else where something can come at you. Glass lenses can break and hurt your eyes.
The second is polarization, which can mess with depth perception in fast-paced ball sports. More on that here.
This is a lifestyle lens, and that is fine. It was never pretending to be a sports lens.
Comparison to the same brand - Vuarnet
Vuarnet Brown Polar
Same glass, same coatings, same 12% VLT, in a strong yellow-leaning brown instead of a grey. This is the more versatile of the two by a distance. You get contrast, you get warmth, and you get a lens that still has something to offer when the sun goes behind a cloud. If you are picking one Vuarnet to own and you do not live somewhere permanently bright, the Brown Polar is the easier recommendation. The Grey Polar is what you pick when you specifically want the calm.
Vuarnet Blue Polar
Same specs again, 13% VLT, and much further into blue than the Grey Polar goes. Blues look fantastic through it. Greens and reds pay for that, and they pay more than they do with the grey. I like the Blue Polar for what it is, it is arguably the best blue lens out there, but most people are going to want the Grey Polar. It gives you a lot of the same cool, calm feeling without asking you to give up as much of the rest of the color. I'm not a big fan of blue lenses in general.
Vuarnet Skilynx
The famous one. A dark yellow lens, not polarized, 10% VLT, same glass and coatings. This is a completely different experience, a huge amount of yellow contrast and a view that some people love and some people cannot deal with at all. If you know you want that, you already know. Otherwise, the Grey Polar is the safer lens to live with.
Comparison to Grey Lenses of Different Brands
Maui Jim Neutral Grey
This is the other direction entirely. Maui Jim managed to add color enhancement to a grey lens without pushing the tint toward another color, which is the hardest thing to pull off in a grey, and the result is vibrant in a way no other grey is. It comes bi-gradient, which darkens the top and bottom, and it comes in multiple materials, though the glass is the best of them. Against the Vuarnet, the Maui Jim makes everything more saturated and more separated. The Vuarnet makes everything quieter. Neither one is wrong, you just have to know which one you want. I lean Maui Jim for most people and most places, and Vuarnet for someone who finds that much color tiring.
See here for the full Maui Jim Neutral Grey review.
Costa Del Mar 580 Grey
Costa is also built around comfort in extreme brightness, so the intent is close to Vuarnet's, but the execution lands in a different place. The 580 Grey is a more classic balanced grey with more color left in it, and greens in particular come through brighter than they do through the Vuarnet. Costa also sandwiches the mirror between two layers of glass on their mirrored versions, which is a nice detail if you go that route. If you want a dark grey for brutal sun but you do not want the cool blue lean, Costa is the one.
See here for the full Costa Del Mar 580 Grey/Silver Mirror review.
Serengeti Onyx
Also glass, also polarized, and slightly photochromic, with a silver mirror on the front. The photochromic range means it is not locked at one darkness the way the Vuarnet is, though in practice the Onyx is more set at dark than actively shifting. When I put the Onyx, the Maui Jim Neutral Grey, and the Costa 580 Grey next to each other in full sun, the differences between them were smaller than you would expect. The Vuarnet sits apart from all three because of the blue lean. The Onyx is the pick if you want a bit of range and the mirror look.
See here for the full Serengeti Onyx review.
Conclusion - Vuarnet Grey Polar Sunglasses Lens Review - Should you buy it?
The Vuarnet Grey Polar is a dark, cool-leaning, beautifully made grey glass lens. 12% VLT, category 3, full coatings, and a slight blue tilt that mutes greens and reds and leaves blues clean. It is a calming lens rather than an exciting one.
It shines in hard sun and nowhere else. Deserts, high summer, sun on water, bright snow. It falls apart in overcast, it is unusable at dusk, and it is too dark for most driving. If you are light sensitive, or you already know you prefer a quiet view to a loud one, this will feel like it was made for you.
I put it at Tier 3. It is made about as well as a lens can be made, and it is a dependable option that I have owned and worn for years without a complaint. What keeps it out of Tier 2 is that the tech is not doing enough to be special. The NPE filter adds a little, but a little is not what separates the top tiers. Worth buying if you want a dark, comfortable, high-quality grey and you have the conditions to justify it.
