Welcome to the GUNNAR-Overclock Test Program  

1) First Impressions of the impact of using GUNNARs (after the first 1-2 days)

2) Formal review after testing GUNNARS over a week period in all different environments and experiences

3) Recommendations based on your experience touching on what you liked, what you didn’t like, and whether you would recommend them to other OCN members.
Edited by crashdummy35 - 4/17/12 at 9:25pm

Sorry for the confusion; we'll be sending some fresh forms over to you shortly!

I have to admit that in the past I had been pretty skeptical about some of the claims GUNNAR eye wear were making about their products. I had seen YouTube videos of people making reviews on them. I had seen a few live streams of gamers who used them regularly and claimed they really helped combat eye fatigue and enhance detail. GUNNAR themselves advertise them as being able to "Reduce eye strain and improve visual efficiency." I just always had a hard time buying into it.

My skepticism aside, my thrifty nature also kind of held me back from taking the plunge and grabbing a pair of GUNNARs to try out. Thrifty.... Let's just be straight here OCN: I'm cheap and I know it. You know it. We know it. But that's just who I am.

To be honest GUNNAR makes some pretty hefty claims regarding their eye wear. And to make those claims here on OCN ... Simply put:

They just have to show me, show us that GUNNAR eye wear actually does all that they claim it can do.

Well guess what OCN..? GUNNAR is pretty darn confident in their eye wear apparently because they sent the cheapest guy on this here forum a pair to try out and give his honest, unabridged feedback on. GUNNAR, if I could +Rep you on that, uhum "gutsy" move alone I would.

I seriously had no idea how I would even conduct my tests or whatever so I've been kind of bumbling along here on my end. I've used some reference questions provided to me to kind of guide me as I go. I apologize if this has gone a lot slower than I'd intended but, honestly, I had zero idea how to proceed once the option was presented to me.

I think I am ready to begin here and, without any further delay, let's get this ball rolling....
Edited by crashdummy35 - 4/17/12 at 4:25pm

I was sent a pair of GUNNAR PPKs to test and give feedback on.

The glasses themselves are pretty stylish. The lens frames and arms are, literally, almost razor thin and (this particular style) are coated in an eye catching cobalt blue finish and, are given a bit of flash with snow white sleeves on the ends of the arms. Amber lenses. Shiny and smooth cobalt blue finish. Snow white plastic sleeves as accents on the ends of the arms. These PPKs just plain look good. I'm giving GUNNAR points on the looks alone OCN. Seriously: these PPKs are nice in a modern and moderate way.

The PPKs fit my face nicely, also. Comfortably. The arms have a slight curvature to them, along with a flexibility that allows them to kind of hug your head. The nose pads are made of some soft, gel-like plastic (almost like tiny gel-filled balloons) with some give to them. The pad arms themselves are well placed and designed to sit comfortably on the bridge of the nose--at least they do on mine. It would take a noise the size of a cucumber to make these PPKs sit awkwardly on your face.

Like many other gamers here on OCN, I don't use a "gaming" headset; I use a set of headphones with a separate (desktop) microphone. My current over-the-ear "cans" are a set of HD201's. I've used the GUNNAR PPKs both with and, without, the headphones. Without the headphones the PPKs are soon forgotten, completely absorbed into the gaming experience... With my HD201's on I did feel a very slight discomfort for the first couple of days. Nothing bad or off putting, in any way. And I'm not blaming it on the PPKs. Not at all. I'm blaming it on the fact that I don't wear eye glasses and am unaccustomed to having anything on my ears while I wear my headphones. I find it completely reasonable that I would feel a sort of ... awkwardness ... temporarily, when introducing a new element into my headgear. By the end of the third day of using my PPKs along with my headphones that sense of mild discomfort was gone. Completely. And today it's as if it never was.

The lenses provide me a more than ample viewing area. Completely uninhibited vision. Even when looking off to the sides, my vision isn't affected until I reach the point I would consider the "unused" periphery. I'm not sure if that's the proper terminology but, I am referring to that point where your eyes just can't go any further to the left or right. Though stylishly narrow, the lenses aren't cut too narrow. The thinness of the frames overall, coupled with the perfect cut of the lenses make for a perfect viewing area.

Modern. Stylish. Well designed. And, let me add, the quality of the manufacturing process is immediately apparent in the GUNNAR eye wear.

So, OCN, up to this point I am giving the GUNNAR PPKs an A+ rating.
Edited by crashdummy35 - 4/17/12 at 4:25pm

[ I want to make a note here of the monitors I have been using in my GUNNAR testing. My main monitor is 19.1 inches and has a resolution of 1440 x 900, my secondary monitor is 17 inches and runs at a resolution of 1280 x 1024. My secondary monitor is really only used for running After Burner, RealTemp and one of my chat clients while I am in-game. I wanted to share this because I am aware that the majority of OCN gamers are at 1080p or higher resolutions. Just something to bear in mind. ]

I started off simply, slowly, by looking at my desktop wallpaper. It's Battlefield 3 themed made up of mostly black, grays and white. The only colors come from the flames on the left side of the soldiers body. Slowly pulling my PPKs down over my eyes I noticed two things right off:

1) There was a slight sense of magnification to what I was viewing when the PPKs came down over my eyes. Nothing startling or alarming. It was subtle. Slight. Something I more felt than saw, if that makes any sense. And,

2) The color contrast on my screens was definitely changed somewhat.


Magnification? I made a quick side step to grab a printed document and hovered the PPKs just barely over it, scanning for change in the printed text. I didn't really see any. Hummmm.... I scooted my chair back over to my desk and looked at my screen again. Lowered the glasses down over my eyes then, raised them back up. Lowered, raised. Lowered, raised. Looked over at my router and did the same thing. Definitely something there. Slight as the magnification is when the glasses come down, it's there. I'm guessing that this is some form of refraction that happens when you actually have the glasses on your face. Maybe? If so and I'm not just tripping: nicely done GUNNAR. Well played. I will also add this for anyone considering GUNNAR Optiks eye wear: The sense of magnification is very slight. Hardly even noticeable. And not at all uncomfortable. The only way I even caught it is because I was repeatedly lowering and raising the PPKs over my eyes, trying to put my finger on the changes I was seeing on my screen.

The color contrast. I still don't quite know how to explain this but, I'll have a go at it here....

First, I am going to relate this to the game I am currently playing: Battlefield 3. At 1440 x 900 my in-game setting are as follows: All HIGH, except for the Mesh which I run at Ultra; AA x 4; AF x 16; Post AA is Low; Ambient Occlusion is SSAO; and, I run kcuestag's config for FXAA injector--for the colors. *Again, I would point out that these results should be considered relative to my set up.*

I went right into Caspian Border and began looking around in earnest. I would point my soldier towards something I considered of interest and then begin the lower then raise, lower then raise routine. There was/is a real difference with the GUNNARs on. The grays, greens and browns of the RU jeep became more...robust. Is that the word I'm looking for? Not brighter. More natural. The red hue of the explosive gas canisters you find laying around became more of a true red. The RU tank colors stood out more, become more distinct. It was nice.

For comparison I removed my FXAA injector files and ran Battlefield 3 vanilla for a while. Even running Battlefield 3 stock, the GUNNAR PPKs made a big difference in the overall visual aspect of the game. Foliage, rocks, the dirt roads: the color of things just looks better in-game. Looking directly into the sun in Battlefield 3 as a pilot or chasing someone up an incline will still melt your eyeballs. Leave you blind as a bat. No change there. But the blame for that belongs squarely to the game's developers.

[ A note here: There is one color that I noticed is affected in a slightly negative way. Pure White. The clouds and those secret things hidden under white plastic you find bundles of in several places in Battlefield 3 are no longer snow white. They take on an ever-so-slight not-snow-white tone. Not enough to be considered a negative, for me; but, for the purists/true enthusiasts this is a factor to be taken into consideration. But this testing & review are both far from over so simply make a note of that...not a final judgment with it. ]

Color contrast is a huge factor in the overall impact the GUNNAR PPKs have had on my Battlefield 3 game play so far. It's a definitive plus. Hands down adds to my gaming experience.

But my PPKs have had more of an impact on my gaming experience than just color contrast alone OCN. That slight magnification I mentioned earlier has come in really handy and is another definite plus when it comes to comparing my previous and current gaming sessions. Make no mistake, I fully understand that a 1440 x 900 resolution will remain a 1440 x 900 resolution and will not gain any added pixels by wearing any eye glasses. But the slight magnification alongside the color contrast and reduction in glare is one helluva combination, let me tell you. Some objects have certainly become a bit more distinct, discernible, when wearing the PPKs.

Modern Warfare 2. Team Fortress 2. Left4Dead 2. I dabbled a bit in my other, neglected games for the sake of this review and to satisfy my own personal curiosity; and, the results have all been the same: they all just looked better to me. All of them. Every single one.

I moved on to still photos and began studying a few images using my patented lower raise, lower raise method. Images around the web. Personal photos. Even the Sample Pictures that came with my Windows 7. And it was a Sample Photo, not even a high resolution photo, that again showed me the GUNNRs were having an actual affect on my computer screen viewing. The image is called Hydranges. And after slowly raising and lowering the GUNNARs over my eyes slowly, several times, I noticed that certain details were way more distinct when the PPKs were on--even on such a low resolution image. Here is a marked copy of the same image showing where the detail most becomes more distinct. The Yellow mottling on the violet petals in the marked areas really shows through more clearly when the color contrast, glare reduction and magnification all come into play at once. On a 1024 x 768 image, no less. 1080p and above owners, IPS panel owners: I am fully confident that you, also, would see improvements in your viewing quality--relative to your hardware, of course.


Once again OCN, up to this point, I have to give the GUNNAR PPKs an A+ rating. Thus far they truly deserve it.
Edited by crashdummy35 - 4/17/12 at 4:26pm

Some of the benefits GUNNAR eye wear brings to the table are immediately noticeable. The color contrast and the increased detail are obvious from the first moment you put the GUNNAR glasses on.

Another way the GUNNAR PPKs affect my computer use only became truly evident to me after a few days of use. I noticed that I wasn't having any trouble looking at my monitor for extended periods of time, like I sometimes had previous to trying out the GUNNAR PPKs. My main gaming monitor is just a few ticks brighter than my secondary screen (which I pretty much use solely for hardware monitoring and chat programs when I am in-game) and it's intentionally a tad bit brighter because I have it set that way. Mainly for gaming purposes.

In the past I would sometimes suffer from the usual compliment of eye fatigue symptoms :

• Dry eyes
• Watery eyes
• Itchy eyes
• Headaches

These normally came about during some really intense, marathon gaming sessions, or, after I had spent a couple of hours staring into the glaring white background of a document I was working on using a WORD program. I'm sure you've been there yourself:

1. You lean back in your chair, close your eyes and rub them down hard with the heels of your palms; or,
2. You lean back in your chair and tilt your head upwards to stare at the ceiling for a few seconds, just to get a break from the screen; or,
3. You just spontaneously get up and leave your computer because it's beginning to wear on you too much--you need an immediate break

Think about it for a second, when you sit and stare into a computer monitor for hours and hours on end you are basically just staring into a source of light. And though computer monitors are, indeed, highly adjustable when it comes to settings such as brightness and contrast in the end it just doesn't matter: you will still be staring into a source of light for hours and hours on end. There's no getting around it--no matter how good your monitor is--over time it will wear on your eyes and cause you to be less focused and less productive at whatever it is you are doing because you will have to deal with eye fatigue and it's many symptoms as you go. Whether it's working in Excel, a WORD program, editing videos and photos, or shooting noobs in the face in Battlefield 3 eye fatigue will eventually cause you issues with your efficiency.

About three-to-four days into my GUNNAR PPK testing I opened a WORD program to start trying to make some sense of the notes I was kind of scribbling on random pieces of paper at my desk. I was about 20 minutes in and getting nowhere fast when it dawned on me: my monitor had actually become easier for me to look at. The normally glaring white background of the WORD document I was working on seemed subdued somewhat with the GUNNAR PPKs on. I worked, more like typed random thoughts, for at least an hour before giving up and closing the WORD program. It was then that I scribbled "monitor easier to look at..?" as a sort of Layman's Hypothesis.

That weekend the PPKs got their first real test in regards to eye fatigue. Because up until this point I had only used the PPKs modestly. Hadn't really "burned them in" yet. On that weekend I really went at it in Battlefield 3. I'm an avid player of the game as is it but, that first weekend with the PPKs I logged some serious hours. Continuous stretches of up to 3 1/2 or 4 hours. NOT ONCE did I suffer from any of the previous symptoms of eye fatigue. Never once did I feel the need to rub my eyes. Or squint at my screen to keep my focus on what I was doing. And at no point did I feel the need for the eye drops I keep in one of my desk drawers. Quite simply, I noticed that my eyes just felt better. Over the course of that entire first weekend with the GUNNARs I actually noticed that my eyes did indeed feel better, even after hours in front of my pc monitor playing Battlefield 3.

Eye fatigue is something people who work in an office environment, looking into a computer screen for hours on end, should really consider when deciding on whether GUNNAR eye wear is for them or not. It is, let me tell you. Excel, WORD programs, Power Point Presentations ... anything that requires you to maintain complete focus on your monitor for an extended period of time is going to cause you eye strain and eye fatigue. The difference between my computer use now and my computer use before is like night and day. I absolutely recommend GUNNAR eye wear to anyone who works in front of a computer monitor for hours on a daily basis.

A+ for their ability to stop the onset of eye fatigue. Or, at the very least, to delay it until you will end up getting up from in front of your monitor before it affects you anyway.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


This is also the point where I decided that I would take to watching a few of my favorite television shows online rather than on my TV using my DVR's recorded list. A few I would still watch on my television.

The Good Wife and Two and a Half Men I began watching online. I also dug out some of our DVDs and would watch one here and there.

Game of Thrones and Nurse Jackie I continued to watch using our television. And would watch the occasional movie on the DVR List or On Demand.

This is where the GUNNAR PPKs kind of stumbled, though. As I mentioned previously: Pure Whites aren't exactly Pure White once you are wearing a pair of GUNNARs. I can't really find flaw with any other colors when I am wearing the PPKs and watching a show or a movie; but, white does indeed suffer from the lens tinting. It was pretty apparent on both my computer monitors and both our televisions. I made sure to watch a variety of movies especially just to see what effect the GUNNARs would have on the visual quality: Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers, The Runaways, Saving Private Ryan..... In the end my conclusion is still the same:

1. Reds, Blues and Greens seem to benefit from GUNNAR Amber tint lenses
2. Color contrast and overall detail is increased immediately
3. Whites suffer from the lens tint

In gaming or creating a simple document in a WORD program, I can live with it. Already I've become accustomed to it. It's a non-issue for me at this point in regards to my games and WORD program struggles. The overall benefits of wearing a pair of GUNNARs when gaming or making a simple document FAR out weigh the impact the Amber lens tint has on the color white.

But when it comes to watching a movie or a show or a video, it really becomes an issue. Take the show Game of Thrones for example: the color white, in the snow, the frost created by the mens' breath and numerous other things, is really necessary to create the ambiance...to convey the feeling of cold to the viewer when the story shifts to the Far North--North of the Wall. I have watched the newest episodes both with and without the PPKs on. The impact is tangible and a negative.

It's a shame really because most colors in the movies I watched seemed, overall, cleaner and better looking with the GUNNAR PPKs on. But white plays such an important role in movies and television that I've noticed it's something I'm just not willing to sacrifice. Not for those two forms of visual media.

So here, I personally have to give the GUNNAR eye wear a B- grade. Which is not all bad. In the livingroom or bedroom I would not use them to watch something on television. At my computer, I might depending on what exactly it is.
Edited by crashdummy35 - 4/17/12 at 7:12pm

I found the GUNNAR PPKs to be an absolute benefit to my gaming and general computer usage experience.

• The product is solid and well designed
• Build quality is excellent
• The benefits are immediate and much welcomed

I would absolutely recommend the GUNNAR line of eyewear to other OCN members based on my experience with the product. Simple as that: GUNNAR has proved to probably (okay) THE most budget-minded member of OCN that their eyewear is a true benefit to anyone who spends countless hours in front of a computer gaming or performing other tasks.

There's no denying that the GUNNAR PPKs I have tested have changed the way I game and interact with my computer.

One of the best changes is the huge reduction in breaks I would have to take during those really long Battlefield 3 gaming sessions with the guys I run with from OCN. Most gamers knows the breaks I'm referring to:

* You run some serious matches with the guys and then, after the eyes start to get dry and irritated, you have to call for a break and leave the group in Battlefield 3 and (for us) TeamSpeak 3 to take a break and let your eyes rest. Eye fatigue, strikes again.... Those days are gone for me. Only time I have to drop out of the matches now is when my lady isn't in the mood to make me a sandwich or I have to go to the bathroom

I would again like to thank both GUNNAR and OCN for giving me the opportunity to test their product line and give my honest feedback in regards to it.

I will be submitting a thorough, comprehensive review to the OCN Reviews Section by mid-week next week after I purchase a new camera. It was my intent all along to photograph a few of the details I found rather appealing to me over the course of this testing: the overall build quality, the excellent design/placement of the nose pads and pad arms, the razor-like thinness of the frames; but, after getting back both of my cameras in a non-working state I'm having to shop around for a replacement because the cost of repairing either of my now-out dated cameras is far too great as opposed to just buying a new one.

If either GUNNAR or OCN has any questions or suggests in regards to this jumbled review, please, let me know.



Feedback Form.docx 20k .docx file
Edited by crashdummy35 - 4/25/12 at 6:52pm