Oakley Custom Radarlock Review

2 years ago I got a pair of Oakley Radarlock Sunglasses to review.

Were they good? Yes. Were they perfect? No. ( Click Here to read the review )

I’ve skied a lot in them, both in-resort but more specifically while ski touring both in Australia and France. They’ve been out to Feathertop, and on some of my most memorable days in France. This has given them a good workout, and I found that while I find them very comfortable, and love the lens interchange system, the lenses themselves weren’t the perfect tints for what I was doing, and also while it matched my ski jacket, the Orange colour was a little garish.

Enter Oakley Custom.

The call went out from Oakley to customise some perfect sunnies, so I chose to revisit the Radarlocks and get it just right.

If you are in Sydney you can drop in to the O Store in Bondi Junction and have them made up to your specification on the spot – they have the biggest custom collection in the Southern Hemisphere

But if Sydney is not an option you can do it online, which is what I went with.

So what did I choose?

For the Frames I went all-white. I’ve had many pairs of Oakley Sunnies and Goggles in white and it has become a bit of a signature look for me. I felt a bit guilty going for such a flat colour scheme when there is such a range of options, but I just like white eyewear and that’s that.

For my first lens I wanted a reasonably dark lens, but not the blast shield that I previously had with the Polarised Fire Iridium. This was a fantastic lens but when the sun goes behind a cloud it’s tough to see, so I went with Ice Iridium – it’s just that little bit lighter in tint which adds versatility – also the reflective blue looks great especially with the white frames. Also the white/blue scheme looks a bit like The Stig’s helmet which is kind of cool.

For my second lens I wanted something that could deal with variable/low light, but with a bit more tint than my previous Persimmon lens. I chose a Polarised G30 Iridium lens. Polarisation removes a lot of glare off the snow without needing to be a dark tint, and also the base tint is rose which has always been my favourite in low-light conditions. The second reason I chose this lens is that it is also good for Golf. While skiing is my primary sport I am also a very keen golfer playing off an 18 handicap (I shall also boast that I won my handicap division of my Club Championship this year) – so it is good that these lenses will suit on the golf course.

So I plugged all this in to the website, made my order and received the sunglasses less than a week later.

So how are they? Fantastic.

My previous review adequately covers the main functional points of the sunglasses – so on this occasion I am more interested in the custom process and the lenses I chose. I’m far happier with the all-white frames, and the Lenses are set to be winners.

Naturally due to the time of year I haven’t had them out on snow but I can tell from wearing them in a variety of situations that they are going to be exactly what I am after.

Golf is a little more tricky as I wear glasses – and found out the hard way when I went to review the sunnies on the golf course that vision is extremely underrated. I blew the first few holes due to not being able to focus on the ball, so I switched to wearing my glasses while playing shots, and the sunglasses while walking down the fairways etc. This did highlight to me that I need to take better care of my eyes, a round of golf in Summer is 4-5 hours of pretty serious UV exposure and I really need to think about contact lenses or even laser surgery as I was so much more comfortable while wearing the sunglasses and noticed the glare when playing shots.

I’m a big fan of the custom process, everybody has different needs and requirements and it allowed me to choose the frame colour that suits me best and the lenses that suit exactly what I do.

(Review Disclosure – these sunglasses were provided at no cost by Oakley Australia for review purposes)