Revant vs Oakley Lenses: An Honest Side-by-Side Comparison
We are perpetually pushing things forward for you and for us. We’ve spent months working with a third party testing agency to determine where we lead in our field and where we have room to improve. We regularly get questions asking, “Are Revant lenses as good as Oakley?” With kid gloves off, we want to share what we found, what we are celebrating and where we are headed. We're pretty happy with the results and thrilled to show you how you can save big by prolonging the life of your favorite frames. Replacing your lenses not only saves money, it helps you maintain the level of quality of your favorite brand. We came to compete.
We'll dig into the details on what manufacturers look for when crafting lenses that can withstand your daily adventures, what they mean and how they can level up your favorite pair.
Optical Precision
A low-quality, non-prescription lens produces a very imperfect image, which usually increases in blurriness as you move away from the center. The image may have halo distortion around object outlines and straight lines may be distorted. Consistency and accurate measurements are crucial when handcrafting your lenses and become a big factor when examining production methods.
What this means:
When we craft our lenses, we use injection molding, which allows us to incorporate taper correction in all of our lenses. Taper correction allows light to pass straight through the lens without bending, eliminating any distortion of objects to create a lens that is optically correct. Lenses that aren’t optically correct tend to cause headaches or blurry vision. Thanks to taper correction, Revant is as optically precise as Oakley and much better than competitor replacement lenses, which struggled to meet Z80.3 optical standards.
Haze
Haze is measured as a percentage of light that diverges from its path when passing through the lens, meaning how clear a lens appears to be. A "perfect" lens would be indistinguishable from naked vision as far as the amount of light entering the eye is concerned. The industry standard is no more than a 3% reduction in transmitted light, with readings under 0.5% not being distinguishable to the human eye.
What this means:
Revant matches Oakley in lens haze reduction with 2.5x the optical precision of the competitor replacement lenses.
Hydrophobic Performance
Hydrophobic performance is all about preventing water, dirt and oil build-up on the lens. Better performance means you don’t have to clean your lenses as often, and when you do, they’re easier to clean. Hydrophobic performance is measured in terms of the contact angle of the water as it drops on the surface of the lens; this test determines overall effectiveness of the hydrophobic coating in repelling water. A contact angle greater than 90 degrees is said to be hydrophobic. The higher the value, the more aggressive the angle—meaning the lens will be better at shedding water.
Revant is as good as Oakley in Hydrophobic performance.
The verdict? We’re good. Real good. Revant replacement lenses offer comparable quality to your favorite brands at a fraction of the cost. But we aren’t done yet. Our goal isn’t to meet manufacturer standards—our goal is to offer the best lenses in the world. Let’s keep moving forward.
In the meantime, we’ve got you covered from trail to street, from office to outdoors. Find your favorite frames here and upgrade them with Revant replacement lenses today.