First Look: Oakley Airbrake MX Goggle

Oakley recently introduced their Airbrake MX Goggle, and we have to say, it's not only innovative, but unlike just about anything we've seen. We've also got a pair that we're trying out, and you can look for a review soon. (Click any image for a larger version.)

Let's set the scene first. The goggle launch was held at Oakley's headquarters in Foothill Ranch, CA.

Oakley's Mike Bell was in charge of the presentation here. He invited up such previous Oakley heroes as Johnny O'Mara and Jeff Ward, and had current riders like Ryan Villopoto, James Stewart, Ryan Dungey, and Eli Tomac up on stage as well.

Ricky Carmichael made his entrance by riding his RM-Z450 down the stairs into the theater.

Okay, now for the hardware. The lens isn't stamped, but instead it's injection-molded from Plutonite, the same material Oakley uses for their glasses. Impact resistance resistance is said to be much higher, as well as being more optically correct.

Here's the complete goggle. You can see how the lens presses against the inner gasket to seal it against the semi-rigid front frame.

The outriggers can be easily swapped out to change to go from tear-offs to a roll-off system. Check out the height of the film here. That's huge compared to some of the other setups that we've seen. Oakley says about 60% bigger.

We'd seen this drop test done with glasses before (the spike is dropped through a tube onto the unsuspecting eyewear), but apparently regular goggle lenses struggle with this test. You can see the gouges on the lens from a couple different drops with the spike...but no penetration. They also have a test rig that fires steel balls at the lenses that would show slight dings, but no penetration.

This was another interesting test rig, where air was pulled through the eyes in the headform, dust was introduces to the inside, and they could test to see how well the foam performed. The anti-fog on these is also said to be extremely good.

Maybe the only negative is the sticker shock for these bad boys. A standard goggle will retail at about $160, while the roll-off version (which also includes the regular outriggers for tear-offs) is supposed to be about $220. No word yet on the replacement cost for a lens.

As we said before, we'll be taking a closer look at these after putting in some laps with them, but in the meantime, how about a couple promo videos from Oakley showing off the features of these bad boys?

Oakley Airbrake MX: Periperal Vision - More Motocross Videos

Oakley Airbrake MX: Protection - More Motocross Videos