This is the top-of-the line freeride goggle by Sweet Protection, the brand that arguably makes the best helmets on the market. I have a couple of Sweet helmets that I use and I was excited to try the matching goggle. As expected the google mated very well with my SP Rooster helmet, so far so good. The goggle is built like a tank and feels very solid. The whole idea seems to be to build a double-lens goggle with plastic sealing around the lenses instead of foam, and with a small swatch of GoreTex taking care of the sealing the inter-lens space from the moisture. As I said the google feels like a vault, very little frame give, this is the goggle I would like to wear if I run into a tree (hopefully not)... The optic quality is very good with a caveat (see the rest of the post). The included lens options (two lenses) are sensible, but a bit close in VLT than what I would like to see.
Sounds neat so far, but it is much, much more complicated in practice. First, the lens change system is very solid, but leads to some truly bad usability issues. The lens is held by magnets in the middle (great) and two metal prongs on the sie that are pulled into the frame by levers. Works well enough, the problem is that those prongs are sticking out from the lens, making the spare lens storage a major inconvenience. If you put the goggle and the lens in the included bag, the prongs will scratch the other lens, or stick out from the bag and catch everything in your backpack. And forget about putting a spare lens in your jacket pocket. Bad design. The puzzling part is that the prongs are not really needed, the place where they pull into the frame is then covered with another part of the frame, so having another magnetic attachment point there would have been just as secure in practice as having the prong.
The optional hard case (sold separately!) is an expensive disaster, as it forces you put the spare lens in front of the goggle where those prongs are pretty much bound to scratch the lens, since the goggle is not held in tightly. SP recognizes this and includes plastic cap for the prongs (which sooner or later would get lost). Besides, a $200+ goggle should come with a hard case these days. I am not even mentioning the issue that this case is HUGE.
But, by far the worst feature of Interstellar was fogging. These fog up like a champion, meaning they fog up hard and in no time. Obstructed ventilation with a tight fit to the helmet (Sweet's own Rooster), combined with a small GoreTex dot, which is easily obstructed by a snow clump or a raindrop, defeats all the neat and fancy design features. Granted, the day was awful weatherwise, but I had plenty of those days before and never had issues that were that fast and that severe. I was fully fogged up from a ride up on a chair by the time I got to the top in a wet snowstorm. In a rain/snow storm at Squaw this brand-new high-end fancy goggle was useless. If I stopped and wiped the insides with a microfiber cloth, I could see again, but only for a couple of minutes. A modern goggle should not do that. A $220 google simply has no excuse for that. Any goggle works on a dry bluebird day, so today was a really good test.
I hope SP goes back to the drawing board with this one. If you want to try Interstellar for yourself, make sure that you have a solid return policy.
Sounds neat so far, but it is much, much more complicated in practice. First, the lens change system is very solid, but leads to some truly bad usability issues. The lens is held by magnets in the middle (great) and two metal prongs on the sie that are pulled into the frame by levers. Works well enough, the problem is that those prongs are sticking out from the lens, making the spare lens storage a major inconvenience. If you put the goggle and the lens in the included bag, the prongs will scratch the other lens, or stick out from the bag and catch everything in your backpack. And forget about putting a spare lens in your jacket pocket. Bad design. The puzzling part is that the prongs are not really needed, the place where they pull into the frame is then covered with another part of the frame, so having another magnetic attachment point there would have been just as secure in practice as having the prong.
The optional hard case (sold separately!) is an expensive disaster, as it forces you put the spare lens in front of the goggle where those prongs are pretty much bound to scratch the lens, since the goggle is not held in tightly. SP recognizes this and includes plastic cap for the prongs (which sooner or later would get lost). Besides, a $200+ goggle should come with a hard case these days. I am not even mentioning the issue that this case is HUGE.
But, by far the worst feature of Interstellar was fogging. These fog up like a champion, meaning they fog up hard and in no time. Obstructed ventilation with a tight fit to the helmet (Sweet's own Rooster), combined with a small GoreTex dot, which is easily obstructed by a snow clump or a raindrop, defeats all the neat and fancy design features. Granted, the day was awful weatherwise, but I had plenty of those days before and never had issues that were that fast and that severe. I was fully fogged up from a ride up on a chair by the time I got to the top in a wet snowstorm. In a rain/snow storm at Squaw this brand-new high-end fancy goggle was useless. If I stopped and wiped the insides with a microfiber cloth, I could see again, but only for a couple of minutes. A modern goggle should not do that. A $220 google simply has no excuse for that. Any goggle works on a dry bluebird day, so today was a really good test.
I hope SP goes back to the drawing board with this one. If you want to try Interstellar for yourself, make sure that you have a solid return policy.
Last edited:
(cough) 
