Do you regularly wear corrective lenses?

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I got nothing.

I swim with daily disposable contacts.

It's because the lens is curved. All curved lenses have some funkiness under water. If you must go that large, get a flat lens, even if the sides have a weld. Hell, or go to the swedix (arena).

Yep, as others have mentioned, if you wear contacts then any goggle-lens curvature messes up vision - well, does for me anyways. Has to be a flat goggle lens or things get a little 'dizzy'! ;-)

I swim with contacts too. Tried a pair of Tyr goggles and almost hit my head on the wall :) they add a ton of distortion. I only wear Speedo Vanquisher, those are fine.

I wear spectacles and have been very pleased with aquasphere eagle goggles. You can replace the lenses for corrective ones.

My vision isn't perfect but pretty good, and perfectly fine for an hours swimming.

Obviously for an actual triathlon I would wear contact lenses for the three events.

With you wearing contacts while swimming, the curving of the lenses and your contacts mess make it look really weird under water. You would need to get a pair of flat lens goggles in order to make it not blurry.

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Jeff Brown - Georgia

This is not 100% accurate. There are some lens curves that will always cause distortion, but not every goggle. Aqua Sphere has a patented curved lens technology that allows us to curve a lens without distortion or magnification.

Endoverend wrote:

Yep, as others have mentioned, if you wear contacts then any goggle-lens curvature messes up vision - well, does for me anyways. Has to be a flat goggle lens or things get a little 'dizzy'! ;-)

Not all curved lenses are created equal, and not all eyes are created alike. There is a small portion of the population that will struggle with a curved lens in a pool (in open water there are not any sharp straight lines so that distortion is rarely an issue). This will be due to a multitude of reasons, but requiring corrective lenses is not the cause every time ( I have always swam with contacts and I have never had an issue with a curved lens). Sometimes the curve in the lens is to blame, you are bending plastic which is hard to do while still maintaining clear optics underwater. Sometimes it's just not the right goggle for you (the curve is to much for your eyes).

Curved lens goggles won't work for everyone, but some curved lenses are better than others. For example a recent article in the WSJ hyped a new goggle that has curved lenses and gave you excellent peripheral vision, then in the final paragraph it spoke about distortion underwater. This doesn't mean that everybody will see the distortion underwater, but some will unfortunately.

Disclaimer: I'm not just someone that works for Aqua Sphere, I'm also a goggle user.

jake

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Get outside!

I know that Michael Phelps has an endorsement with Aquasphere, and wears the new goggles in competition. But I have a picture of him in his MP aqua sphere logo cap, wearing the flat-lensed Swedish goggles. Apparently, he also has an issue with curved lenses as well.

If you can stand taking the contacts out I highly suggest Rx goggles. I'm blind.....-6.5....I kid you not my Speedo goggles are as good as my regular glasses it's comical. Which begs the question why I pay $300+ for new lenses every year and Speedo goggles are $15 bucks. I might just wear my Speedos all the time wooo hoo!

Fair enough. Early on when we launched the MP brand we had one goggle that was available and Michael preferred to wear a swede to race IM events as he always had (he was still wearing the K180+ otherwise). Last month we launched the XCEED goggle, a curved lens goggle, which has been in development for the better part of 2+ years. If you look at any photos of Michael swimming from about September- October of last year on, he will be wearing a goggle with a curve. Either the K180+ or the XCEED.

I did say above that curved lenses won't work for everybody. In Michael's case he can.

I don't endorse our product as the only one out there. It is just one of the better options.

Jake

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Get outside!

Hi Jake, it was (and is) just my experience as a contact lens wearer (short-sighted) - was frustrated with the K-180's as they sealed great but caused that distortion (& eye-strain) for me. Good point you made re open-water, may try them again just for that purpose.

Hey Jake, to your (and aqua sphere's) credit, the customer service is outstanding imo. Before going to the swedix (I'm now spoiled on the forward vision thing), I was a long time user of the kaiman and the k180s. You are right when you said not all curved lenses are made the same. When I wore those I didn't notice distortion when doing the actual swimming. I think any minor distortion was when I was standing idle and doing something like looking at my watch at close range underwater, or perhaps picking something off the pool floor (and the square tiles became slightly fuzzy idk). But aqua sphere does make a great product and apparently its one of the most popular goggles in triathlon, very comfortable, and again, the customer service is great, which is important to me. Really if/when a more forward viewing angle type goggle is made by aquasphere, I wouldn't hesitate to go back (for open water purposes).

I had the same problem with the Aqua Sphere mask. As others have mentioned, it's the curved lens. An Aqua Sphere rep said they just don't work well for some folks. I went back to TYR goggles