ZEAL Incline
Our take The mark of great sunglasses? You forget you’re wearing them, which is what happened every time we donned the Incline. Like other ZEALs, the resin in the sporty, wraparound frame is made of castor beans, a fast-growing, renewable resource. But unlike others, it’s made with the company’s latest thin-injection process, which slices the weight in half, without affecting durability.
“I don’t baby my glasses, but these held up fine to drops and rough packing,” one tester says. Bonus: The Horizon Blue lens—also plant-based—enhances blues and greens, which we appreciated on a three-day canoe trip on the super-lush Whanganui River in New Zealand. (The Incline is also available in dark gray and copper tints, but we didn’t test them.)
Trail cred “They sit lightly on my face with zero pressure points,” a tester says. “On a five-day trip on the Green River through Canyonlands National Park, Utah, we had nothing but sunshine and I appreciated the all-day comfort.” Buy Zeal Optics Incline Now
$149; 0.8 oz.
Oakley Crossrange Patch PRIZM Ruby
Our take All sunglasses block light, but not all of them improve vision. That’s the benefit of the Prizm lens, which filters out specific wavelengths to enhance contrast. Think about it like the difference between a natural rainbow, where the colors fuse into a spectrum, versus a drawing of one with more pronounced color blocking. With the Prizm Ruby lens, Oakley essentially does the same by strategically censoring wavelengths on the color spectrum to create more contrast and boost earthy tones, like browns and greens. “It’s like putting an Instagram filter on your vision,” one tester says. “Every workaday below-treeline trail looks like the Hoh Rain Forest.” Note: The Crossrange Patch frames come…
