Bianchi Falco glasses

These Bianchi Falco glasses are a pretty generic Euro-style set of shades that you either like the look of or you won't, but you'll probably have to like Bianchi bikes and their signature celeste colour.

The Falco glasses come to you in a small clamshell carry case. It's got a belt-clip on it should you wish to go Full Continental and dangle your glasses case to your trouser belt loop. Inside there's space for the Falcos, pouches for the two sets of spare lenses and a fabric bag for more pocketable carrying and lens cleaning duties.

The frames of the Falcos are made from Grilamid TR90, which looks and feels a lot like plastic, but apparently it's a rigid material with a high flexural fatigue strength, which means you can passionately rip them off your face or sit on them and they're more likely to bend instead of snapping.

The temple ends are made from Hytrel which also looks and feels a lot like plastic, but is a less shiny one to that of the frames. They come with small dimples on the insides of the arms for extra grip and have holes at the ends should you wish to lanyard them and hang them around your neck for extra Euro café points.

The Falcos are narrow wrap-around sunglasses that sit close to the face, so they might not comfortably fit wider heads despite the arms having an amount of flex to them, especially since the ends of those arms curve in significantly. They may or may not fit too snug with your frontal facial structure too, depending on how chiseled you are, and perched on my face my eyelashes could easily brush the lenses. On the plus side, this narrow shape and close fit means there's nowhere for wind and rain to get to your peepers and they don't interfere with straps or other helmet infrastructure. Then again their snug fitting style might mean you'll suffer from fogging up when ambient conditions or lack of speed allow.

All of the lenses offer 100% UV protection and optical quality is good, with clarity only dropping off a bit towards the outer edges where the world gets the teeniest bit fuzzy. The lens options of smoke, yellow and clear will see you through any lighting combination you should encounter, the yellow ones being most useful during UK monochrome days for putting a bit of cheer into the sky and increasing contrast. Swapping lenses is the usual warp the frames to pop them out and in again affair and takes seconds, without the 'I think I'm going break these' wrestling of some brands.

The frames come in three different colour combinations, each of them featuring the Bianchi trademark turquoisey shade somewhere. Whether you can wear Bianchi sunglasses and not be riding a Bianchi is a deep moral matter that's open to tea-stop discussion.

The Falcos are a light set of gigs which makes them incredibly easy to wear, and despite feeling on the flimsy side because of their light weight, the build quality is just fine, the hinges haven't gone baggy and the lenses are still tight in the frame. They sit comfortably against the head with no pressure points, at least on my narrow skull, and despite the temple ends not being as sticky as some other makes there was no trouble either there or with the rubber nose pieces suffering sweaty slippage during a ride. They're not going to set your insides a-tingle with innovation or recherché good looks though, unless you like Bianchi.

Verdict

Unremarkable Euro-styled glasses yet light and good three-lens value, possibly just for the Bianchophile