Designed to give the benefits of goggles, with the ease of glasses, the POC Devour glasses offer a huge field of vision and loads of coverage for added protection.
- Brand: POC
- Product: Devour Glasses
- From: pocsports.com
- Price: £230
- Tested by: Ross for 6 months
The frames have been designed to fit a wide variety of shape and size faces, and feature both an adjustable nose piece and arms. The nosepiece is constructed from a soft rubber material for comfort and features a couple of different positions for different width noses, while the length of the arms can be altered between set positions to get the perfect fit.
The lenses are heavily curved to increase the field of view yet are fairly ‘flat’ on the vertical axis. Across the top of the lens is a series of vents to keep the glasses from fogging up, and behind vents the frames sits away from the lens itself to aid airflow.Â
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The glasses we’ve had on test are the Uranium Black frame with a Clarity MTB Silver Mirror Cat 2 lens which is designed for mixed cloudy / sunny conditions and has a VLT rating of 15-24%. The Clarity lens was developed in conjunction with Carl Zeiss and has been developed to give optimum control over the colour spectrum. The MTB / Trail Clarity lenses have been ‘fine tuned’ to sharpen up green and brown colours, the sort usually seen when out riding. The Devours also come with a spare clear lens and soft carry pouch that can be used to wipe them and they cost £230.
The lens also offers a full range of protection from UVA and UVB rays with a UV protection with a rating of UV400. They also feature a hydrophobic and oleophobic coating – Ri-Pel. Ri-Pel helps to protect from dirt, water, sweat, salt, oil and dust, helping water bead off and making the glasses easier to keep clean, along with also benefitting from an anti-scratch treatment.
Fit and performance
The Devour a good few options for getting the fit right, with the extending arms and movable nose piece. After trying the arms in each length, I found that the middle length worked best for me and I also preferred the nose piece in it’s wider setting. This allowed the glasses to sit more comfortably on my nose and closer to my face. The way the arms are shaped and angled, it makes the ,lenses quite angled against your face, with quite a big gap between the top of the frame and my brow.
Once on, the POC Devour glasses are comfortable to wear for long periods with no hotspots either on the nose or around the ear and worked well with a variety of helmets and retention systems from Smith, Troy Lee and Fox.
The lenses sit a good distance away from your face and allow loads of airflow to keep things from getting steamy. The frame pretty much touches my cheeks at the bottom, but is vented to hold the lens off and allow air through. As previously mentioned the top of the frame sits quite a way from my brow and this, and along with added vents in the frame and lens, this lets a massive amount of air through. Almost too much in some conditions.
I suffer from watery eyes on descents when the temperature dips, especially when it’s windy, and on a few particularly breezy days I’ve still suffered from blurry, teary eyes when descending. I’ve yet to get them to fog up on climbs though, even on cold days and when working hard they have remained nice and clear.
The field of vision is great with the POC Devour lens and frame being both tall and wide so they give an unrestricted view of the trail. The tint is in the gold / brown spectrum and works well in a mix of light conditions – from overcast to fairly bright sun – giving a good tint and accentuating particular colours and textures, although I’ve found them to be better in more open areas. Once in the woods, with mixed, or dappled light, I found the lens could feel a little ‘dark’ and I struggled to pick out features on the trail. Once things open up though, with less dense tree cover, the colour and tint of the lenses work really well.
The lenses handle rain well, with the hydrophobic coating doing a good job of getting the water to bead, and when you give them a wipe they do a great job of clearing without smears. And so far they are still nice and scratch free. In very overcast and persistently wet weather though I did find the lens becomes too dark even for open moorland riding.
Niggles
While the POC Devour glasses do give great coverage and work really well in the right conditions, I did have a couple of small issues with the fit and lens. As mentioned, with them sitting quite far off my brow, and having such good airflow, I did suffer with my eyes watering on a few occasions. Not a massive issue but one of the reasons I wear glasses in winter. The other issue with how they fit was that the wide gap at the top allowed water to run off my helmet and down the inside of the lens. Again not a huge issue most of the time, but means that I had to remove the glasses to wipe the lens, so not easily done when riding.
The other issue I’ve had is to do with the lens. When looking ahead down the trail, there is a reflection of the top of the frame at eye level caused by the thicker frame and angled lens. This creates a ‘ghost’ line / shadow right across the lens which becomes more prevalent in brighter conditions.
Overall
The POC Devour glasses offer loads of coverage and a great quality lens, but at a pretty high price. They perform well in a pretty mixed range of conditions, with crystal clear vision, but they’re not without issues.
