Work for the company or WSJ?

Nope. I'm just a fan of their products. I own all of their swim gear, a pair of jammers, the F1 and F2 goggles, water bottle, the Endurance run cap, Endurance visor, and a t-shirt. Roka gear is really good.
As soon as they release their new wetsuits and swimskins, I'll be getting those too.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

The wsj does a terrible job at reviewing goggles. Just saying.

Anyway, these look they might be a pair of open water goggles that I wouldn't actually hate. Interesting...

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Interested to see how big they are in person. The X1s were huge.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

You own a Roka water bottle? That's just awesome.....

You might get a bit less snark if you skip the exclamation point for something like goggles, which don't rate too high on most folks' list of things to get really excited about. Just sayin'.

Innovation in any tri product is exciting. Triathlon is more than just bikes. The exclamation point is staying

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

@Titanflexr,

The R1s are a medium sized frame we that we built completely from scratch in-house. They are similar to our F2 platform with a unibody (connected but flexible) nose bridge in 10 SPCTRM colors (2 new ones) and share a gasket similar to the F2.

The lenses are made from premium polycarbonate, and we've put an optical quality scratch resistant coating on the them, a hydrophobic coating to help clearing, and an interior AF coating to reduce fogging. We tried to keep the price down as much as we can (keeping in mind we have to pay down real r&d costs, tooling cost, etc.).

What's coming later:

• We are working on an interchangeable nose bridge version for the future, since the unibody works for most people but not everyone. This takes time to get right.
• We'll have photochromic and polarized options out later in the year. We weren't happy with the polarized and photochromic films on the market, so it's taking longer to get something we think works well enough to sell.

We'll start selling in them soon. $30 for non-mirror, $35 for mirror.

Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Best,
Rob

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rob canales
ceo + co-founder at ROKA
http://www.roka.com

Any chance of a speed socket style of goggle with the angled lens? That looks like an interesting feature to me, for better visibility of the walls in the pool.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Do you think their over priced cycling kits are innovative?

Hey Jason,

Would love to, but the unit sales volume for the style isn't high enough for us to justify the r&d and tooling investment. We're just not big enough to absorb that cost. I swam competitively with Swedes for >10 yrs and love them, but they aren't quite as popular anymore, unfortunately. Despite their comfort and small size, Swedes actually test very slowly from a drag perspective, so lots of swim brands have put r&d into lower profile styles lately.

If you haven't tried them, you might check out the Arena Swedix. They are a split lens, so there is a big seam down the middle of the lens, which isn't awesome in my opinion, but they do offer improved forward view in the pool when your head is down.

Best,
Rob

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rob canales
ceo + co-founder at ROKA
http://www.roka.com

I wasn't thinking of swedes, but the speedo speed sockets. Low profile goggles but they have a regular gasket. I think b70 makes a similar style as well.

http://allamericanswim.com/...do-speed-socket.html

I like these because they are the only goggles that have never leaked on a dive on me. But better optics would be nice.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Ah, sorry. I misunderstood. Yeah, like our F1 form factor. Smaller size for sure.

Yep, we are working on a smaller version, but it will be much more hydro than our F1 or the ones you mention. We've got in-house CAD engineering and some people with a lot of experience designing injection molded goods, so we have a bunch of cool stuff in the hopper. Takes some time to get the geometry right and requires a bunch of testing though, and we have to prioritize our projects. We hope to have that smaller one out later this year. Definitely going to bring the tech to multiple form factors.

Best,
Rob

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rob canales
ceo + co-founder at ROKA
http://www.roka.com

Rob,

Thanks for the addtl. info. It also helps that you have some pics on the site with someone wearing the goggles to get a sense of shape/scale. One related question: why no UV coating? I know polycarb is already >90% UV, but why not take it up to 100% like many goggle mfgs and the sunglasses guys?

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/...%2Bh2nwL._SY355_.jpg

They're not the first to have angled lenses. I've been on these for a couple of years with various coloured lenses. Great vision to the sides and fit well under a cap.

That's not the angled lens I was talking about. Those are curved to the side, but not angled forward.

As an aside, I have a pair of the fastskin 3 goggles, and they don't work for me at all.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

The R1's have a patent pending. There may be similar goggles, but these are different.

http://www.rokasports.com/pages/r1-goggle

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Front page article on Slowtwitch about the Roka R1: http://www.slowtwitch.com/..._R1_Goggle_5631.html

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Roka R1's are available for pre-order! http://www.rokasports.com/products/r1-goggle

I'm getting Dark Grey Mirror and Jade Mirror

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

jade i think is not out yet but they look interesting

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Follow me on Twitter @CK21TRHC
I use what I love: ISM, Blue70, Trek, FLO

Yeah as soon as Jade becomes available I'm getting it. I already pre-ordered Dark Grey Mirror

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Rob, I train and race with the swedix, and its a huge leap above anything out there right now in terms of fit and forward vision. The "big seam" in the middle was weird for a workout or two, but after that I didn't notice at all. I talked to two other major goggle manufacturer reps and they both said they will have to follow suit with the split-lens (or some sort of forward design). I've tested tons of goggles, but if I had to pick my dream goggle it would be the nootca lens with the swedix split design.

That being said I am interested in trying the R1 (for training in lakes, etc) if I can get over the price (not saying that alot didn't go into r&d, simply saying "I'm cheap").

Hi MikenUltra,

Sounds good. We have a 30 day return policy, so if you aren't stoked you can return them and just pay shipping.

Hope you give them a shot.

Best,
Rob

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rob canales
ceo + co-founder at ROKA
http://www.roka.com

Hey TitanFlexr,

We've posted a try on video of the R1 at the bottom of this page: http://www.rokasports.com/...s/products/r1-goggle. Each goggle page also has fit videos now. Hope that helps.

The R1 is much smaller than the X1.

Best,
Rob

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rob canales
ceo + co-founder at ROKA
http://www.roka.com