Cleaning Kit
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010Is it worth spending the money on an Oakley cleaning kit?
I just bought oakley bottle cap polarized sunglasses with iridium lenses. Is it worth buying the cleaning kit that oakley sells?
Yes.
The Oakley cleaning kit has a special formulation that maintains the hydrophobic/oleophobic coating on the lens. Being that you have Bottlecaps and they're not hydrophobic lenses, you will be just fine using the cleaning kit.
All cleaning kits are NOT created equal. It's been about a year ago now, but Oakley stopped selling cleaning kits for a while to re-formulate the cleaning solution. They were using the same cleaning solutions that sunglass hut uses. It's the same stuff that you can get at the Walmart optical centers. What they found out was that this cleaning solution had too much alcohol and was damaging the Oakley lens coatings. So Oakley stopped eslling cleaning kits for a while and re-formulated the solution.
Side benefit to using the cleaning kit is that the kit comes with a cleaning cloth. You know to use the Oakley bag to clean the glasses (never a t-shirt or a rag, etc.). However, that bag ends up picking up a lot of dirt from your pocket, bag, tabletops, etc. and then you proceed to rub it around your lens. if you use the cleaning cloth in the cleaning kit, your lenses will last much longer.
Another benefit- if you get one of the newer cleaning kits, when the solution runs out, take it to any O store or Oakley Vault store and they will refill it with Oakley solution for you for free.
On a side note: Never use Windex or any other ammonia based cleaner. Ammonia doesn't react well with Polycarbonate and your lenses will start to "melt". Also, never use a paper towel, tissue, or napkin. Paper products are made from wood. Wood is NOT a soft material.
HTH
D