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Rudy Project's Sintryx shades (Image credit: Dave Caudrey/Immediate Media)
BikeRadar verdict: "Stylish, effective and practical glasses to wear all day, all year round"
Highs: Great lenses that are easy to swap
Lows: They are expensive
Buy if: You want cycling glasses for all-day, all-year riding
Rudy’s Project Sintryx glasses are designed around a new and innovative frame.
The full-frame shades feature a metal logo on the bridge of the nose that doubles as a button. This activates a sprung catch that pushes the frame’s top and bottom apart, just enough to safely remove the lenses with no force or effort needed, making switching lenses a doddle.
At 33g the Sintryx’s lens-swapping design doesn’t add any significant weight, and on the bike the highly-sprung enclosed metal hinges grip your head tenaciously, making these fine road glasses and a superb choice for gravel and cyclocross riding too.
The frame is inspired by Rudy’s own brilliant Tralyx frames, where the rims and frame surrounds are heavily vented, shaped using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software to ensure consistent airflow. This means despite these glasses having big frames they didn’t suffer from any fogging on my test rides.
The glasses come with three lenses: a lightly tinted but predominantly clear lens for low light use; a grey option for brighter days and, the star of the show, the new Polar 3FX HDR lens. This orange-mirrored lens is designed to filter out glare from car headlights, the sun and refracted light from shiny surfaces like smooth, wet tarmac. The vibrancy of colours through these lenses is seriously impressive.
I have used these lenses when I’ve been out riding in late afternoon when the sunlight has started to fade and most of the traffic on the road is running with headlights on, and the glare reduction is impressive, as is the new coating that Rudy’s 2018 lenses now receive, which allows water to bead up quickly and run off meaning less wiping as you’re riding.
The Sintryx glasses are an expensive buy, but when shades work this well, and come with three lenses, a cleaning cloth and a substantial hard case, the price becomes much easier to swallow.
The frames are also available in a number of colours, so there will be one to suit your tastes. These have become my default glasses when I'm heading out to ride on gravel and are close to being one of my favourites on the road too.
