In 2007 the world-famous American company Oakley, pursuing achieving a significant acceleration of the growth of its business, purchased the company Eye Safety Systems, Inc. (ESS), starting from 1998 one of the world's largest manufacturers of ballistic goggles and glasses for the armed forces, forces of law and order, and firemen.
Ballistic glasses ESS ICE (Interchangeable Eyeshield) began its long historical way at the end of 2001, for the whole period the model has survived minor modifications, which mainly concerned only the sides, cases and various variants of packaging arrangement. In 2004 there appeared ESS ICE NARO, which differs in lens of smaller size. And only at the beginning of October 2009 there was introduced a new generation of safety glasses ESS Crossbow, which use a new technology of mounting the lenses and their protection against external influences.
For comparative review I tried to choose the most equal and expensive packaging arrangement. The presented above ESS ICE glasses set consists of elastic case on zipper with unlimited possibilities of mounting, goggles with removable smoky lens, additional transparent and yellow lens, defogging duster, elastic fixing lace, a sheet outlining the characteristics and level of protection, instruction and logo sticker.
The case of the glasses is made of a sufficiently strong nylon, inside the case there are provided elastic inserts under each lens that protect the goggles from unwanted scratches. Black elastic sides are made from wearproof plastic, and are regulated when needed into five positions in length according to the face shape. At the end of sides there is a special hole for mounting the elastic fixing lace.
The set of ballistic glasses ESS Crossbow contains hard case with a zipper and mounting MOLLE, goggles with smoky lenses, yellow and transparent lens packed into an elastic case, which also serves as duster, adjustable elastic fixing lace, an information sheet on labeling, instructions and logo sticker.
In both glasses there is used a wide lens which has thickness about 2.44 mm, made of lightweight polycarbonate, which without applying additional covering provides a complete protection against ultraviolet rays (UV-A, UV-B) on the visual organ. ESS lenses meet the standards of ANSI Z87.1-2010, US Federal OSHA, CE EN 166 FT and US MIL SPEC MIL-PRF-31013 (paragraph 3.5.1.1). The standards guarantee the quality of manufacturing and providing reliable protection from getting the fragmentary particles at fair speed, with a wide viewing angle. Furthermore, Crossbow lenses have an additional defogging covering ClearZone ™ FlowCoat from the inside and anti-scratch covering on the outside.
At the beginning the total size of the glasses ESS Crossbow can seem much larger than ICE. In fact, if you put two lenses together, it appears that the lens Crossbow yields in length and a width of 4-5 mm in some places. Nose clips are designed for dioptric inserts ESS Rx Lenss, and are identical and interchangeable. Adjustable elastic fixing lace can also be used from any item.
The Crossbow rim is not regulated, nevertheless, thanks to the system of Tri-Tech Fit ™ the goggles sit tight and do not fall down, which allows using them as regular sunglasses without fixing lace, which can’t be said about the rim ICE. Such rim has its disadvantage, it is too "thick" for using with headphones, as the alternative one can buy a specially designed rim Suppressor™.
Changing lenses in both models is made fast and easily. For Crossbow glasses there is developed a system DedBolt ™, which reliably fixes lenses and allows changing them quickly. In the beginning, without an experience such a system can cause difficulties. I think it is less reliable and strong than ICE. The main difficult phase when changing the lenses is to transfer the nose clip, the thing is quite fragile and can be broken.
About the quality of the ESS company's merchandise I can judge from personal experience. I have been using a set of glasses ESS ICE since 2008 to the present day. For the whole period of usage, the glasses have protected the eyes from branches, chips and sand, and from the dangerous hitting of the hard and soft pneumatics. I had to replace only the cracked nose clip, which became worthless due to rough handling.
The number of goggles counterfeits has sufficiently increased on the market, including the ESS production, because of simple design and mounting. I advise you not to risk becoming a disabled person, better purchase from authorized dealers. The sets of protective ballistic glasses were provided by PROF1 Group. The price of ESS Crossbow 3LS set, which was reviewed, is $ 110, and ESS ICE 3LS set will cost $ 60. The delivery within Ukraine is free.
