| I like my Grills (I will forever boycott the spelling with the Z) but they aren't perfect. The anti-fog coating is amazingly effective with new lenses but seems to wear out quickly. On both of mine the foam started to separate from the eyepiece long before it wore out. Super-glue fixed that issue though. Cleaning them is super easy. You can pop the lens out clean it up and have it back in in about a minute.
Forgetting to lock the eyepiece in place should not result in catastrophic failure even if the strap is looser than it should be. The frame held by the strap holds the eyepiece roughly in place even if the eyepiece is not locked to the frame. Experimentally I couldn't make mine shift to an unsafe position with reasonably exaggerated movements and pressures.
The lens retainers could be a problem if they aren't locked with the strap clips. I wish the Grills were designed so that the strap would pull out of the frame if it were not locked into the lens retaining clip because then it would be improbable to be able to put them on without the strap clips locking the lens retainers. I guess they didn't want the strap to come loose should a clip fail but seeing as the clip would have to have both teeth break to pull out I consider that scenario less likely than accidentally leaving the retainers unclipped after reinstalling the lens. As it stands I just experimented with mine and the lens was still secured without the strap clips locking the lens retainers. Shaking my head and bumping/flexing the mask repeatedly did not dislodge either of the retainers or the lens. Should both retainers be removed (necessary to remove the lens), on my head the lens still stays in the frame. If you have a very wide face it may pop out but my wide face was not wide enough to flex the mask frame enough to cause the lens to come out with normal movement. Now if you grab the mask and spread it as if to take it off - boing there goes the lens (but only if both retainers are out). Could it happen? Yeah it could (and apparently has) but it's a compound failure stemming from user error and unlikely.
I once neglected to push the little pins on the lower piece of my Flex 7s through the bottom of the upper frame. It held its shape long enough to put it on and go play at which point it pivoted down from the earpiece screws hanging like some comically distended jaw until I pushed it back up and exited the field to assemble them correctly.
Far more embarassing is the time I grabbed my Grills off the table on the run heading towards the field and pulled them on before I noticed that the lens was not in the frame and had to run back to the table to put the lens back in (all of 20 seconds). |