Mountain (green), Ocean (black), and Glacier (off-white) respectively. Not much photos without the centerpieces online, hope this helps.
Looking for highly protective sunglasses for long and sunny days on the move?
Look no further.
I no longer put my UA Halftime's on and find myself opting for the Herons, particularly for their superior stability.
From the most to the least protective:
- Glacier: Blocks 94% of sunlight. Mirrored. Perfect for alpine mountaineering, ski touring, and glacier expeditions.
- Ocean: Blocks 86-88% of sunlight. Polarized. Perfect for fishing, sailing, kayaking and general outdoor activities. My favorite. Caution: The blue is mirror coated whereas the black is not.
- Mountain: Blocks 86% of sunlight. Non-polarized, non-mirrored. Perfect for hiking, climbing, ski touring and general outdoor activities.
- Brown & Black colors: Brown tint
- Green color: Green tint
- https://www.vallon.com/products/mountain-glasses
Side shields and removable centerpieces are leather in all items. Goes very well especially with the Green. Wish I had the "style" to pull off wearing these in city center.
To me there are two things that make Vallon’s Heron series different:
- Elastic temple tips
- Customize and adjust to your ears. This is a godsend for any outdoors activity; whether it’s climbing, hiking, sailing or skiing. Adjust instantly and it’s impossible to drop them. They're a bit on the narrower side though, so if you're Wayne Rooney rocking the widest face ever to walk this earth, then you might better think twice or put them on at a store before you get them.
- High VLT
- If you're like me and your eyes are sensitive to light, you'll appreciate this a lot. As much as all sunglasses cut out the light (duh), when you’re out in the sun for too long, you usually find yourself wishing for more protection. Mountain and Ocean are kind of the same in this regard, whereas the Vallon's flagship Glacier cuts twice as much sunlight compared to the other two (6% vs 12% VLT). To my knowledge it's been around for the longest as well.
On top of that, unlike snow goggles, they’re not bulky or cumbersome. They're even lighter than standard sunglasses.
So what is VLT?
VLT, stands for Visible Light Transmission, is a metric used to determine the level of light that passes through the glasses, broken down by categories for easier interpretation.
- Category 0: 80-100%
- Category 1: 43-80%
- Category 2: 18-43%
- Category 3: 8-18% (Ocean & Mountain belong here)
- Category 4: 3-8% (Glacier belongs here)
As you see, all Herons provide very low light transmission, with Glacier having a slight edge over the other two. In practice, the difference is there but it's small.
My personal takes
My eyes are pretty sensitive to light. Before I've upgraded to Vallon Heron, I had invested in Under Armour’s Halftime Sunglasses.
My main gripe was serving during tennis. Courts usually must be set in North and South rather than West and East directions to counter this, but sometimes that's not the case.
When I go cycling or running for a short time, UA Halftime's still fill the bill.
But they don't come with adjustable temple ends. So when I was playing tennis with them in the past, they kept falling off my face.
This was pretty annoying and made it impossible to zero in on.
It's not possible to find empty courts during summer evenings in crowded Istanbul either.
So I started training for tennis indoors using VR, just because of this. I even became pretty good at it, lol, and started to join tournaments.
The other choice I had was to be like Kanye West and wear my giant ski goggles to tennis.
In the end I gave up and thought that there was nothing I could do to prevent tears streaming down my face because of extreme sunlight.
Enter Vallon's Heron series. Turns out there is a solution.
Full adjustment allows you to customize the temple tips for your unique ear shapes. My favorite feature so far. Superior stability makes you forget you're even wearing any glasses.
So far I had the chance to wear them while playing tennis, canoeing and hiking in the woods.
My favorite has been the Ocean so far. The black color probably has a lot to do with it though. More compatible to wear with anything.
Glacier. Brown tint, but feels pink-ish at times. The best display of all 3 in my opinion.
But I also like its grey tint and polarization. When it's very bright outside sometimes the reflected glare bugs me even more than the direct sunlight.
I wear all these casually as well, not gonna lie.
Obviously I wouldn’t wear these in the city center when I’m casually going out for a walk (lol). But I found myself wearing them a lot of time when I go out for whatever reason in the rural Aegean.
It gets unbearably bright here, especially during the afternoon, and the laid-back rural seacoast summer atmosphere makes them a lot more convenient to put on.
The design of the sunglasses with the leather side shields already makes these quite a bit distinctive anyway.
My plans were to go sailing with these this month (September 2024), but shockingly, the Aegean is cloudy. Can’t wait to go skiing with all of these next winter.
More images
Photos taken by good old iPhone's have always been appealing to me when selecting colors. Because superior product photography can be misleading sometimes.
Find Heron photos taken with my iPhone 13 Mini below.
