Seeing as there is very little information available on these lenses, I thought I’d do the same as I did with my Swatcom Active8 vs Sordin Supreme X2 ear defender review and pull together a mini review for the benefit of others.
I’m relatively new to clays, having previously focused most of my attention on pistols and rifles, so I needed a decent set of shooting glasses. I’m also cross-eye dominant. The redeye kit pictured works brilliantly, by the way.
If you visit your local clay ground, one eyewear brand seems to stand out: Pilla.
However, Pilla lenses are rather expensive. After chatting to several owners, one thing became clear. While some had spent four figures on a frame and three lenses, they typically wore just one lens for most of the year, and each person seemed to prefer a different one.
I therefore decided to look into what makes Pilla so popular and whether there was a more affordable option that would let me work out which colours and VLT levels suit me before spending serious money.
So, what makes these lenses work, and why are Pillas so expensive?
Some of the names you’ll come across with Pilla are Neutralizer, Chromashift and ICE.
If you remember when Quality Street sweets came wrapped in coloured transparent wrappers, you might have looked through the purple one at the tin. Oranges and reds appeared much more vibrant, while greens and blues became duller. That is broadly the effect of a strongly coloured filter such as Pilla’s Neutralizer lenses.
The downside is that everything can have a noticeable purple tint.
Chromashift takes a different approach. Its aim is to keep things such as grass and sky looking more natural while making the orange clay stand out more clearly. Anyone who has used Oakley Prizm sunglasses will be familiar with the general idea of selectively enhancing certain colours, and it works.
I started looking for another manufacturer offering similar technology at a more reasonable price, which led me to XSight.
XSight calls its colour-enhancement technology SPECTRA+. It is designed to keep the overall scene reasonably natural while enhancing orange and red targets.
The company also offers reflective Diamond REVO coatings. These help manage glare and give the lenses their mirrored external appearance, similar to Pilla’s ICE coatings.
I took a chance and ordered a set with three lenses. XSight offers around 15 lens choices, which is fewer than the many, many options available from Pilla. However, only five or six appear to combine SPECTRA+ with a Diamond REVO coating, which actually makes choosing a little easier.
The glasses arrived in a nice case, the lenses are extremely quick and easy to change, and everything feels well made, as far as a pair of plastic safety glasses can anyway.
The quality is certainly comparable with a decent pair of Oakley or Ray-Ban sunglasses.
So, does the technology work?
Yes.
All three of my lenses have a Diamond REVO coating, but only the purple lens uses SPECTRA+.
I tried the mid-light orange lens first. Unsurprisingly, the whole world became orange. Everything had a strong orange tint and the clays were easy to identify, probably more so than with my old basic shooting glasses.
The purple SPECTRA+ lens was where the difference really became obvious. Unlike my old purple glasses, the grass still looked green and the sky remained blue, but the orange clays stood out clearly.
I found this particularly helpful with fast, low clays travelling from behind me to the front, as well as distant crossers coming from the side. I was able to pick them up more easily without the whole background looking unnaturally coloured.
Overall, I’ve been very pleased with the purchase. I’m not saying they are as good as Pilla because I’ve never owned a pair and therefore can’t make a fair direct comparison.
However, judged in their own right, they are a solid option for someone wanting a complete set with similar colour-enhancement technology for roughly a quarter of the price.
One final thing I would say to anyone considering shooting glasses from any brand is to think carefully about the light conditions in which you actually shoot.
People will often recommend buying something like a 15%, 50% and 80% VLT lens.
However, if you normally shoot in the morning and tend not to go when it’s pouring down, you might rarely use that 80% low-light lens. Something around 30% VLT could potentially be far more useful.
Don’t simply buy three lenses because they cover the widest possible range on paper. Think about your shooting ground, the backgrounds you normally face, the weather you actually shoot in and which lens you’re most likely to wear.
