GUNNAR Haus review: Stylish and comfy blue light reducing glasses

There’s no question that staring at a screen all day isn’t very good for you. Whether it be for work or entertainment, the fact is a lot of us are staring at screens for hours a day. Personally, I hit anywhere between 9 and 14 hours of screen time a day between work, this website, TV watching, and gaming.

Blue light is both good and bad for you, depending on the time of day. While it does affect our natural wake and sleep cycle, blue light exposure from your screens is especially bad for you later at night and can make it harder to sleep. Our GUNNAR Haus review takes a look at a pair of stylish and comfortable blue light reducing glasses featuring their newest Clear Lens which block 35% of blue light from screens. Read on to see why it deserves a Top Pick of 2019 Award here at Techaeris.

Specifications

The GUNNAR Haus glasses with Clear Lenses have the following features and specifications:

• One-piece front construction
• Lightweight construction
• Proper weight balance
• Multi-layered acetates
• Proprietary patented GUNNAR lens material and tint
• Blocks harmful blue light and 100% UV light
• Anti-reflective lens coatings on front and back of lens
• Silicone hard coated lens to prevent scratching
• Lens width: 53 mm
• Nose: 15 mm
• Frame width: 125 mm
• Temple: 140 mm
• Weight: 31 grams (without packaging)
• Colour: Onyx or Tortoise (black or mottled brown)

What’s in the box

• Polycarbonate Lens Index 1.59
• Premium AR Coating
• Hard Case
• Microfiber Pouch
• Microfiber Cleaning Cloth
• Warranty Guide

Design

The GUNNAR Haus blue light blocking glasses are available in Onyx (black) and Tortoise (mottled brown) colour variations. Our review sample came in the Onyx colour and look like your fairly typical black plastic glass frames.

The frames aren’t overly thick and fit my face perfectly. Each eyepiece is about 1 1/2 x 2 1/4-inches. The frame wraps slightly around the edge to where the arms attach. Each arm attaches to the main frame by way of a 1 1/2-inch gunmetal grey metal piece with the GUNNAR wordmark etched into the arm portion. The remainder of the arm is the same black sturdy plastic as the rest of the frame.

As mentioned above, our review sample features GUNNAR’s Clear Lenses which block 35% of blue light. Should you desire, you can also get their 65% or 90% blue light blocking lenses. Personally, while I haven’t tried GUNNAR’s version, I do find the ones that hit up to 65% or more tend to make everything look really yellow. While the Clear Lenses do tint things a tad yellow, it’s not overbearing at all and after a while not really noticeable.

Phones, computers, tablets, and other digital devices expose you daily to potentially harmful artificial blue light that wears on your vision and can lead to severe side effects like cataracts, macular degeneration, blurry vision, dry and scratchy eyes, headaches and poor-quality sleep. GUNNAR’s Liquet Lens™ (now Clear Lens) is the gold standard in modern vision protection from the only digital eyewear company to offer measurable vision protection with their patented Blue-Light Protection Factor (BPF) scale. Similar to the Sun Protection Factor (SPF) scale for sunscreen, the BPF scale accurately measures the degree to which a lens protects your eyes from damaging (HEV) blue light and UV light. The GUNNAR collection features their popular golden-hued Amber lens that offers maximum protection at 65 BPF (blocking a minimum of 65 percent of blue light) and the translucent Crystalline lens, which scores 10 BPF (blocking a minimum of 10 percent of blue light).

GUNNAR

The lenses themselves do have a bit of a blue tint from the anti-reflective coating which is visible at certain angles and lighting conditions. When wearing them, this isn’t noticeable but people talking to you may notice it from time to time.

As far as fit is concerned, the GUNNAR Haus fit my face almost perfectly with the arms flexing out only ever so slightly but not noticeable and not enough to cause any concern for strain on the arms. On that note, the arms do flex outwards quite a bit allowing for a fit on wider heads.

I’ve tried a few pairs of glasses over the internet over the past couple years and the GUNNAR Haus are easily my favourite pair of glasses to wear for fit and comfort.

In addition to the glasses, the GUNNAR Haus came with a microfibre cleaning cloth, a microfibre pouch, and a hard case. All three have the GUNNAR logo in red on some region of it but it’s not overly gaudy and is a nice contrast to the black cloth and cases. I’ve been wearing these glasses for a couple of months now and have stored them in the pouch and case each night and they still look like new with no signs of wear or lens scratches.

One last thing which isn’t really design but should definitely be mentioned. GUNNAR does a great job in packaging the glasses to prevent damage while shipping. The glasses are wrapped in a thick plastic layer, placed inside the hard case which is inside a thin box which, in turn, is placed in a thicker cardboard box. You’ll have no worries that your GUNNAR glasses will arrive undamaged.

Performance

I’ve worked with computers for too many years, and gaming is my main hobby. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, my average weekday consists of about 7 hours on the computer during the day then another two or three in the evening. After that, a couple hours of TV watching followed by an hour or two of gaming and, well, it definitely adds up.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with dry eyes to the point that I’ve stopped wearing contacts, as well as headaches on and off, and feeling fatigued after spending a lot of time in front of a computer screen. When I first put on the GUNNAR Haus, I didn’t like the slightly yellow tint that I was seeing. However, after a few days, I did get used to it.

The only time I took them off was when doing photo editing or graphic work. That’s definitely one task that you don’t want to be wearing blue light blocking glasses for of any type as it will definitely skew your view on the colour representation of your photography. You can either trust your application while wearing these or you may find yourself tweaking the yellow out only to have inaccurate colours when exported and uploaded elsewhere and viewed with regular glasses on.

On that note, the days I wore the glasses, I actually felt more productive and less fatigued. The days I forgot them or just didn’t put them on, I definitely felt like I was dragging more and could feel the onset of headaches later in the day. Like most other things, there are opposing views as to the harmfulness of blue light but I definitely feel better while using a computer or gaming when wearing the GUNNAR Haus blue light blocking glasses.

Prescription

While a non-prescription version is available, there is also a prescription option for those of us who need it. Suffice it to say, when I received the GUNNAR Haus and tried them on, the prescription was as it should be based on the information I provided. The one thing you will need to make sure you have is your PD (pupil distance) in addition to your actual prescription when ordering.

Price/Value

The GUNNAR Haus glasses are available starting at US$99.99 for the non-prescription version. Prescription versions are available as well and start at $249.99. As mentioned above, I’ve tried a few pairs of glasses over the internet over the past couple years and really, you do get what you pay for.

As such, $249.99 for prescription blue light blocking glasses is a reasonable price given the quality of the GUNNAR Haus. Up here in Canada, I’ve paid upwards of CA$800 for prescription glasses without the blue light blocking feature. Sure, you can get much more affordable glasses online but, again, you get what you pay for. I have a few pairs that cost me around $30 a pair, non-blue light blocking of course, and one pair barely lasted a year while the other two definitely feel flimsier than the GUNNAR Haus.

Wrap-up

If you work in front of a computer or game for long hours, especially into the evening, the GUNNAR Haus glasses with their blue light blocking Clear Lenses can definitely help you in a number of ways. I definitely noticed more comfort working with less strain or feeling blah when wearing the GUNNAR Haus. On the days and evenings that I forgot to put them on and wore normal prescription glasses, I definitely noticed more of a strain on my eyes and borderline headaches, not to mention more tossing and turning at night while trying to get to sleep.

*We were sent a sample of the GUNNAR Haus Onyx glasses with prescription Clear Lenses for the purposes of this review. NOTE: this review was updated to reflect GUNNAR’s renaming of Liquet Lenses to Clear Lenses.

Last Updated on February 3, 2021.