When it comes to sunglasses for fishing, SmithOptics is one of the big names in the business. In december 2013 I bought a pair of Tenet sunglasses at tacklewarehouse.com and my review is somewhat bifold: Decide for yourself if it is the right choice for you…
My first impressions were positive: The Tenet fits well also on larger heads (like mine), it is still light, and the optical properties of the ChromaPop lenses are great! The enhance the colors, and brighten everything up. Even in the dusk they allow you to see deep into the water, when your eyes already fail due to low light.
I wore the Tenet on many occasions and in many locations… even when I went jigging on Nico’s fast Boston Whaler, it did not fail me. Strong wind, a good swell, and the speed of the boat: The sunglasses stayed in place, and neither then nor at any other time did they fall off my head accidentally.
After roughly two years though, the ChromaPop coating of the lenses started to disintegrate: Tiny crackles first on the edges, and later all over the lenses made them dull and especially when the light came from the sides, everything looked foggy. I was really disappointed, as I had cared for these sunglasses more than for any glasses ever before. I had cleaned them with care, never had them lie around without the case…
So I needed new sunglasses and wondered, if the crackled coating was just bad luck… or a common phenomenon, and accordingly whether I should buy another pair of ChromaPop sunglasses or not… for a price of around 200$ I expected sunglasses to live longer than just two years. So I took pictures and wrote to SmithOptics, asking my questions… and for months, I did not get any reply. I tried different email-adresses that I found on the internet… nothing. Just as I did not expect to get an answer anymore, they wrote that I should go to my local dealer! Well, that kind of answer could have been an auto-reply… absolutely useless… so SmithOptics definately lost me as a client. But decide on yourself.
RESUMEE:
+ optical properties
+ lightweight
+ good fit
– bad durability
– bad customer service