Dewalt and BearKat Bifocal Safety Glasses Comparison/Review

Like many people, around my mid 40′s my eyes started showing the effects of aging, at which time I began experiencing presbyopia.  That meant that I needed reading glasses to see smaller objects and print, especially in low light.

I’ve always been pretty fanatical about wearing safety glasses while working on projects, and now even simply wearing clear safety glasses seems to adversely affect my vision a little.  Thus it was obvious that I needed some safety glasses with a magnifier built-in as well (bifocal safety glasses).

I didn’t easily find a lot of different brands of (bifocal) safety glasses with magnifiers built in though.  I found two different brands on Amazon.

They were made by Dewalt and MCR Safety under the BearKat brand name.

After using the Dewalts for a year I bought some of the BearKat brand glasses.  Here is a review of both of those brands of bifocal safety glasses.

The first bifocal/magnifying safety glasses I bought from Amazon were made by Dewalt.  I bought both the clear lens and smoke lens variant of the glasses (for working outside).

Shipping estimate for these items: August 27, 2010

Here’s the link to the current Amazon listing  for the Dewalt clear variety (price $12.02 + shipping)

As mentioned in the description, the Dewalt safety glasses have a rubber frame and temple pieces.

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I found the fit on the Dewalt glasses to be uncomfortable however, and after wearing them for a short time I found the the temple pieces pressed uncomfortably on the backside of my ears.  Presumably because the temple pieces are flexible, in order to keep them firmly in place they have a curvature in them that resulted in the temple piece hitting the backs of my ears. I rectified that by heating the temple pieces with a hot air gun and bending them a bit to straighten them out more.

This made them more comfortable, but then they didn’t stay in place as well.

The lens/eyeglass sections are removable from the frame, and about a year after having them, one of the lenses in the smoke lens model fell out.  In the process of trying to stretch the frame to reinsert the lens I tore the screw pivot hole in the temple piece on one side.

I never was able to get the lens back into that frame properly.  Since I was wearing the smoke lens model more often, I ended up swapping the frames on the clear and smoke lenses and was able to get the smoke lenses into the one frame, but I still couldn’t get the clear lenses into the frame that the lens had fallen out of originally.  (You can see the loose lens in the rightmost photo above.)

The Dewalts do come with a neoprene sock to store them in, which is probably a good idea for people on the go to store their glasses in at the end of the workday, but my safety glasses sit on the workbench, and it’s not very convenient to have to slip them in and out of the sleeve every time I put them on, or at the end of the day for that matter.

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A year later the Dewalts had acquired enough small scratches to start affecting their clarity, so I ordered another set of safety glasses from Amazon.

This time I ordered the BearKat brand safety glasses.

Here is a link to the current Amazon listing for the clear BearKat (price $4.99).

The BearKat brand glasses have a molded lens and frame, with a rubberized coating on the ends of the temple pieces.

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I found them to be a much more comfortable fit than the Dewalts, and they stay firmly in place.

Both BearKat models are also cheaper than the Dewalts; the clear model is less than half the price of the Dewalts!

Here’s a summary of my impressions comparing the two designs (including some unscientific ones):

I think the BearKat lenses seem clearer and have less distortion than the Dewalt brand.  This is a minute difference and something I can’t prove; it just seems to to me that the BearKat lenses are clearer (but then I was also comparing them a year after the Dewalts had been in use and had some scratches on them, and the BearKats were brand new).

In the smoke lens variety, it appears that the Dewalts are tinted a little bit darker than the BearKat lenses.

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The magnifying portion of the lenses is a bit smaller on the BearKat lenses (approximately 1.25 wide by 0.625 inches at the widest point on the Dewalts, and 1.125 wide by 0.5 inches on the BearKats), but that doesn’t affect their use.

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Overall I prefer the BearKat brand in both clear and smoked models.

The poor fit of the Dewalts is reason enough for me to prefer the BearKats.  The BearKats were much more comfortable, and I didn’t have to worry about a lens popping out of the frame.

Since plastic safety glasses will get scratched in use, they’ll need to get replaced fairly often.

Because of the premium to get the Dewalt brand name, the lower price of the BearKats seals the deal for me.