Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's that time of the year, winter has come. With the huge brands like Oakley, Smith, Electric, Dragon, Anon, VZ... taking over the vast majority of the snowboard/ski goggles market, one would wonder if he/she can ever get some decent goggles under 100 bucks. Well, I am not going to tell you “hey, this is it, go get this, it’s way better than Oxxly, smxxh.” I am going to leave my impression and two days on the slope (Mammoth Mountain). And you can make your own educated judgement in pulling the trigger or not. I, personally, isn’t a pro of any kind. I do have a bad habit on buying different snow goggles to try on and match with my snow outfits. I have owned more than 30 different pairs of higher-ended snow goggles while I still have until 20 pairs as of now. These are my two cents of the goggles: First of all, the packaging of these Akaso Mag-pro ain’t some cheap paper wrapping you usually get when you pay under 40$. The box art is nice but not fancy, it’s arguably better than Oakley thin paper box with plastic case/frame, more like the newer Von Zipper Jetpack hard paper case. It’s pretty impressive and the packaging itself do give you some confidents that your goggle won’t be a DOA (death on arrival). Now comes to what’s inside the package. You get the goggles (obviously), as I typed up this review, they still come with a face mask. The mask is nylon feels pretty comfortable when I tried it on, but I am not planning to wear it anytime soon, so I will skip reviewing that. Goggles themselves have a HUGE lens. The strap has plastic grips for all riders like me who prefer to wear helmets and wear the goggles outside of helmet. Lens is magnetically attached to the frame, hold by 8 magnets on the lens. I have absolutely no idea how much does these lens magnet structure cost, but man they look expensive for 40$. The magnet holds very well as it does take some efforts for me to remove the lens from the frame. Comparing with my impression to Anon M1& M2 that I had tried, these Mag-pro feels way more secured, don’t feel like the lens would fall off the frame when you land funny off a jump and smash your head into the snow (in fact it did hold up well enough in Mammoth Unbound last weekend for me). As you can probably tell by now, it reminds you a lot of Oakley Flightdeck with obvious differences. I am going to compare these goggles with some of the most common frameless designs in the market: Oakely Flightdeck & Airbrake XL, VZ Jetpack & Dragon APS (or x1, the original frameless goggles). (Please refer to my pictures below) Size comparison: These goggles are BIG! They are a bit wider than that of Flightdeck, although the visible angles are about the same. I have a feeling the lens area are the same, just that Flightdeck has a more curved lens. The view inside is good without any weird frame lines. Comparing with that of Airbrake XL, the Mag-Pro is better because they don’t have the mounting point inside the viewing area. Weight-wise, Mag-pro weights 6.5oz while Flightdeck weights 6oz. However, the real comparison here should be with Airbrake XL which weights 6.6oz. Why? Because Flightdeck doesn’t have a quick switch lens mechanism which would easily add some weight into the goggles. Airbrake XL weight 6.6oz, which, in my opinion, Mag-Pro does a very good job and win in the weight comparison. Consider Mag-Pro is 0.1oz lighter (not that much) and also has a way easily mechanism for changing lens (Squeeze the goggles and pop the lens, instead of having to take your goggles off and open the goggle lens lock). VZ Jetpack weight only 5.7oz, however both its viewing angle isn’t as wide as the others and its lens changing mechanism ain’t anything special nor fast. Lastly, the foam of Mag-Pro is comfortable. The Material is good and it’s finer than my Smith I/O X. The foam are also on-bar with that of all my Oakley’s and VZ’s. They are WAY more comfortable than Zeal and Spy (which IMO has the worst foam padding in the industry, they hurt my face…) I took them to Mammoth for 2 days snowboarding, the performance is great. In California, we have blue bird days all the time. I though the 17% VLT will be a bit bright for our sunny conditions but it ended up working out fine. One thing I would recommend them to improve is the height of the lens. When I took a jump or rail, the bottom of the lens would block a bit of my vision for spotting the landing. Comparing that with Flightdeck, which provide a wider vertical angle, the difference is minimal. I am pretty sure not everyone would have noticed this. Overall, I am more than satisfy with these lens, the quality is very high. Honestly, if it’s a blind test or if you give me this with an Oakley goggle straps and tell me this is a new Oakley model, I won’t doubt about the claim.