Oakley Radar EV Path sunglasses

Oakley's Radar EV Path glasses offer a secure, comfortable fit, excellent optics and plenty of style, all of which helps to explain their immense popularity.

• Pros: Excellent optics, secure fit, tried and tested design
• Cons: No second lens

The Radar EV Path glasses aren't new but we realised only recently that we've never reviewed them on road.cc, so we thought we'd better call a pair in.

The lens is large but not full-on gargantuan by today's lofty standards. EV stands for 'Extended View' and tells you that the lens is a little taller than that of the RadarLock Path, for example – the distance from the top of the nosepiece to the frame is about 6mm further on the Radar EV.

This means that these glasses provide excellent coverage when you're in a head-down riding position. If you ever find light getting in over the top of the frame or lens of your current glasses, think about giving these a go.

'Path' also refers to the lens shape. The bottom edge is a concave curve whereas Oakley's Pitch lens has a very slightly convex curve down there, so it extends lower. If you can't decide which one is for you, Radar EV Path and Pitch lenses are interchangeable so you can always change at a later date.

Despite curving right around the sides of your face, the lens hardly distorts at all across the field of view. Ask even rival glasses brands and they'll tell you that Oakley's optics are excellent.

Our glasses came fitted with a Prizm lens designed to enhance contrast on both the road and trail (a standard lens is £10 cheaper). There are nine Prizm lenses available and with different light transmission profiles for various conditions, so you can choose the most suitable. The Prizm Ruby that I've been using is best for bright light, and it makes greens and reds pop out. It makes subtle changes in shade really obvious and the whole world a more vibrant place! Go to Oakley's website and you can see the effect of each lens on a typical riding environment. 

The lens comes with four tiny vents along the top edge to help reduce fogging. Ride eyeballs out and stop suddenly and the lens will inevitably fog up – there's nothing you can do about that – but get rolling again and the vents help a little with getting air circulating again, and the glasses will usually clear in seconds.

You only get a single lens included here, but if you do buy a second one, swapping between them is straightforward: you squeeze the sides of the nosepiece together to release it and then pull the lens away from the frame in the centre. This reduces the tension enough to remove the lens easily.

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The frame is made from what Oakley calls O Matter – probably because that sounds more sciencey than 'nylon-infused plastic' – while the nosepads and the covering used on the arms are a material dubbed Unobtainium. It's a hydrophilic rubber that feels more tacky when it gets damp. I certainly had no worries with these glasses slipping even when sweating loads. In fact, they always felt super-secure either on my face or when stored on a helmet, arms in the vents. Speaking of which...

I tested the compatibility of the Radar EV Paths with a whole load of different helmets (over 20) and the ends of the arms touched the fit systems of a few of them, but it was never a problem. The arms don't have the length adjustment of Oakley's Jawbreakers, for example, but they are surprisingly flexible so you don't get any discomfort even if they do fit over the top of any elements of a helmet, and I never found that this led to any unwanted movement.

You can, of course, buy cycling glasses far cheaper than this, often with a spare lens or two thrown into the bargain. However, the Roka CP-1X and GP-1X glasses that we've reviewed recently are both priced well over £200, as are the Poc Do Half Blade glasses, and each of those models, like the Oakley Radar EV Path, comes with a single lens. A second Prizm lens will set you back £80 while a clear lens is £40. A light-adjusting photochromic lens is £90. The cost price of producing a pair of sunglasses like these is low compared to the amount you have to pay, but you do get excellent optics here.

Conclusion

The Oakley Radar EV Path glasses offer a comfortable and secure fit but it's the optics that really set these apart – the Prizm lens is excellent for increasing contrast.

Verdict

Secure and comfortable glasses with some of the best optics out there