Difference between Prizm Snow Sapphire and regular Prizm Sapphire / Sapphire Iridium

[JK_Cycling]

Hi,
I have both the Sapphire Iridium Lens on a Radar EV and the Prizm Sapphire on some EV Zero blades. I like them both a lot.

Now I have the chance to purchase some Jawbreakers with the PRIZM Snow Sapphire Lense.
Where is the difference from the normal Sapphire lenses?
Is it darker? Prizm Sapphire (regular) is having 13% light transmission, for the Jawbreaker Prizm Snow Sapphire I found some contradictory statements ao far, ranging from 10-20%, but I know that the descriptions in quite some shops are not really accurate.

And to add: As the other frames I own I use them for cycling, so not really in Snow ;.-)

Thanks for any help. As currently, I don't know whether to purchase them or not.

 

[BoostBear]

Hi,
I have both the Sapphire Iridium Lense on a Radar EV and the Prizm Sapphire on some EV Zero blades. I like them both a lot.

Now I have the chance to purchase some Jawbreakers with the PRIZM Snow Sapphire Lense.
Where is the difference to the normal Sapphire lenses?
Is it darker? Prizm Sappbhire (regular) is hvaing 13% light transmission, for the Jawbreaker Prizm Snow Sapphire I found some contradictory statements ao far, ranging from 10-20%, but I know that the desrocptions in quite some shops are not really accurate.

And to add: As the other frames I own I use them for cycling, so not really in Snow ;.-)

Thanks for any help. As currently I don't know whether to purchase them or not.

Prizm snow tints; sapphire, jade and torch all had the following 10% - 20%VLT when they were first released, it was obviously a confusing spec to read online. I wondered if they were slightly photochromic at the time because of the supposed range, the Oakley rep explained that wasn't the case. Rather Oakley choose to provide a sweeping range for those 3 tints as means to convey the idea that they were versatile tints capable of various lighting conditions. With the key explanation of how is the even possible would be where they introduce their pitch about prizm and how its able to tackle a number of lighting conditions opposed to having to swap out lenses like the old tints going from blue bird weather into sudden snow storm - with prizm sapphire snow I've skied in multitude of conditions without much fuss.

The website later revised it again altering the parameters of the VLT range to be slightly different between those 3 tints... No idea why, considering most recently they just provided a single VLT percentage per tint type, like it use to be pre-prizm tints. Why it went through this weird changing VLT period, I have little to no idea besides some marketing ploy to try an convince folks yes you can actually just survive on one lens because it's able to tackle much more than previous tints could.

So to answer your question, what is the true vlt % of prizm sapphire... heck Oakley can't even decided themselves what it is but they seem to have settle on 13% VLT... for now.

Having owned the prizm snow sapphire goggle lens (its the same tint as sunglasses) it used a prizm rose base, which makes it perform well even if it's pretty cloudy out. Additionally this makes the FOV purely rose, there are zero amber or orange hues (which would be present if it was grey base tint instead) Additionally the exterior iridium color is near identical to the appearance of DWP with a single solid sheen of bright sapphire. You won't find the deep rich blue to purple hues you get in prizm sapphire tints that utilize a grey base which provides those particular characteristics.

 

[Makten]

I'd say they don't have anything at all in common except for the name Sapphire. Snow Sapphire is very purple/orange compared to Prizm Sapphire and the contrast is quite extreme.
They are a tad darker than Prizm Dark golf but brighter than Prizm Tungsten, so probably ~15% or so. Which makes them not so useful for everyday use since they are unnecessarily dark for overcast and the contrast is too high for sunshine. I suppose they are good for snowy conditions though.

 

[JK_Cycling]

Hi guys,

thanks for your responses.

@BoostBear: Thanks for the indepth analysis, especially for the history of the varying light transmissions. Indeed that shouldn't be possible unless it's photocromic. Also thanks a lot for the screenshots, unfortunately on the German Oakley site I could only access / find the pages of those glasses / lense combo that are currently in stock. And unfortunately not a lot is in stock at the moment...at least no prizm sapphire and barely any RadarEV, Jawbreaker and Sutros. So thanks for the screenshots, that was the stuff I was looking for.

As for my subject: I won't buy the Jawbreaker with the Prizm Snow Sapphire lense, as the main reason I like the normal "sapphire / Prizm Sapphire" lenses is the grey basic colour and the fact that they don't have a real colour tint, so are pretty neutral. That obviously isn't the case for the Prizm Snow lense, which is rosé indeed, just saw a shot from the inside and that looked pretty Red/purple/pink. As Makten says the lenses don't seem to have a lot in common and what is described don't seem to be ideal for my use-case.

Thanks,
Julien

 

[Makten]

...especially for the history of the varying light transmissions. Indeed that shouldn't be possible unless it's photocromic.

Actually, it is possible. The Prizm lenses are quite advanced filters and depending on the composition of wavelengths in the ambient light, the average transmission will not be the same all the time. For example, overcast gives much more blue (short wavelengths) than a sunset or even mid day full sunlight. If the glass then filters out more blue than other wavelengths, VLT will be lower in overcast weather than in full sunlight.
This might be the explanation, or it's just random guessing from the designers.

As for my subject: I won't buy the Jawbreaker with the Prizm Snow Sapphire lense, as the main reason I like the normal "sapphire / Prizm Sapphire" lenses is the grey basic colour and the fact that they don't have a real colour tint, so are pretty neutral.

Regular Prizm Sapphire is not that neutral to my eyes. There's an obvious rose tint to them. If you want something truly grey, try Prizm black (polarized). I find them great on bright days without clouds, but they make the world appear kind of "cold" and boring when it's cloudy.

 

[JK_Cycling]

At least to me Sapphire Iridium is very much neutral, Prizm Sapphire a bit less, I have to admit.

Still rather neutral compared to other lenses I own. For example if I wear the Prizm Road Lense (that I otherwise like quite a lot) and take them off the whole world rather seems yellow (because of the strong blue cast they have), if I take off any of my Sapphire Lenses there's not a huge difference when I take them off.

Prizm Black is a bit too dark for my taste.