Welcome to another installment of Editor’s Review from FREESKIER. Each week our staff provides in-depth, honest reviews about the gear they’re testing on a weekly basis. Our goal? To point you towards the best brands and products on Earth so you can trust your equipment whole-heartedly and have as much fun in the mountains as possible. Read up on the SPY Optic Legacy goggle, below, then visit us again tomorrow for more awesome gear coverage.
SPY Optic — Legacy
$230
Southern California-based SPY has been melding performance-driven optics with outdoor lifestyle-inspired aesthetics since 1994. To pay respect to its 20-plus year history, SPY developed the Legacy goggle, now available everywhere. I tested out the Legacy at Eldora Mountain Resort—just up the road from FREESKIER’s Boulder HQ—amidst a mix of stormy weather and blue sky, ideal conditions to dive into the features of the goggle.
Before outlining the performance of the goggle’s technical aspects, it’s important to note the throwback style SPY injected into the Legacy. The goggle comes in two color options, one predominantly black and the other white, that both boast retro vibes harkening back to SPY’s earlier days. These throwback tones are sure to turn heads in the lift line and all across the hill.
In addition to its fashion forwardness, the low profile design of the Legacy combines with an ultra-oversized lens—the result is an expansive field of view that is downright bananas. Whether it’s a fallen snowboarder to your right or a straight-lining youngster to your left, you’ll be able to spy any obstacle that could get in your way.
The Legacy’s gargantuan field of view is complemented by SPY’s Happy Lens technology (note: the Legacy comes with both bluebird and low-light lenses). The light filtering lens allows long wave, mood-uplifting blue light to easily pass through, while giving a proverbial stiff arm to harmful short-wave blue light that can cause fatigue and damage your eyes. The Happy Lens also boosts color and contrast to help you decipher contours in the snow, natural hazards, etc. All of this came into play at Eldora. When we boarded our first chair, the snow was coming down in buckets and visibility was poor, so I utilized SPY’s intuitive Lock Steady 2.0 quick-change lens system to pop in the Happy Persimmon w/ Lucid Silver lens—a low light option that employs the Happy technology. The lighter visible light transmission (VLT) allowed more natural sunlight to filter through the lens and cut through the darker surroundings brought on by the storm hovering over Colorado’s Front Range.
Testing the SPY Legacy at Colorado’s Eldora Mountain Resort.On top of the visual benefits, the Legacy’s flexible frame conformed to my face and stayed in place and the goggle fit seamlessly with my POC Auric Backcountry Cut helmet—SPY claims the Legacy is “compatible with the world’s most popular helmets,” and in this case they’re spot on. From bombing down groomers to smashing mogul lines, the goggle provided an almost panoramic view of the surrounding ski area and boosted the color and clarity on an otherwise gray day, all while adding a bit of flair to my kit.
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