Selecting the right pair of blue-blocking glasses for gaming or office work can be overwhelming! Who can you trust? Do these even work? Which ones are the best?
Because we’ve independently tested over 50 of the best pairs, we have all the answers to these questions.
You should come away from this article feeling confident that you’re selecting the best pair of blue-blocking glasses for your desired use case. But how do we know which ones to choose?
Choosing a Lens: Clear vs Tinted
Before you go ahead and buy a pair, you need to decide what’s more important, blocking all the blue light you can, or maximizing color accuracy.
You see, if you wanted to block all the blue light, you go with a red lens as we talk about in our blue blockers for sleep article. For everyday use, however, this is not only overkill, but it’s unhealthy, as you need some amount of blue light during the day to entrain your circadian rhythm.
This leaves you with clear lenses that have a blue blocking film to slightly tinted ones that block a bit more light.
To illustrate this, let’s look at a couple of TM-30 color data examples…
Here’s what a TM-30 graph of sunlight looks like:
And here’s what it looks like when sunlight is filtered through two different kinds of blue-locking lenses:
As you can see, the tradeoff is almost always:
More blue light blocked = More distorted colors
So pick your poison.
Clear Lenses
Clear lenses usually only have a minimal blue-blocking film coating.
Examples of what clear lenses let through:
Clear lenses are useful for anyone who needs better color perception while working or gaming. These also look more “normal” if you don’t want to stand out with slightly colored lenses.
Pros
Cons
Tinted Lenses
These lenses also typically feature a blue blocking film but also introduce a slight yellow tint to further cut down on blue light.
Examples of what tinted lenses let through:
Tinted lenses are great for anyone concerned about eye strain and who wants to cut down on blue and violet light without disrupting their circadian rhythm too much.
Pros
Cons
How Do Blue Blockers Work?
Not all blue blockers are created equal.
In our guide on how to test your blue blockers, we go over a little trick companies play to show you how good their blue-blocking glasses are.
Many clear blue-blocking glasses include a little “blue” LED pen and a piece of photosensitive paper.
Indeed this LED does not pass through a normal pair of clear lens blue-blocking glasses. But does this matter?
Not really. It turns out that this blue LED is actually quite violet:
So yes, many blue-blocking lenses block 400nm violet light, but your computers, phones, and TVs all emit blue light peaking at around 460nm. Which is very far from 400nm!
Blue Light From Screens
When it comes to consumer devices, we don’t need to worry about whether our glasses can block 400nm light!
So as you can see, most electronics are emitting blue light at anywhere 450 – 460nm, so we really want to know how well our glasses cut down on this peak, not 400nm.
If we combine all these by averaging them, here’s the spectrum we get:
We want to see how well blue blockers cut down on this spectrum, so this is exactly what we did.
All of the glasses in this article will be checked against this to see how well they cut down on the blue spike.
The Best Clear Blue Blockers
Here are my favorite clear blue blockers!
Out of the many we’ve tested, these have performed the best.
1. Horus X
These glasses block a ton of blue light despite being relatively clear. However, they also have the worst color rendering of the clear lens options.
Horus X
2. Gunnar Clear
The clear lenses from Gunnar perform quite well, almost as well as the ones from Horus X.
The Gunnars fare much better in the color rendering department, however, so if you’re willing to sacrifice a little bit of blue light passage for better color, go with these.
Gunnar Clear
3. Ocushield
Out of the effective clear blue blockers, the Ocushield has the best color rendering.
While it’s color vector graph may look similar to the Gunnar’s:
That is looking at sunlight. If you’re actually looking at a computer screen, the Ocushields will win, they just let through more blue, green, and red light.
So, if you’re working on color-sensitive work but still want to reduce that blue light peak, I’d recommend these.
Ocushield
The Best Tinted Blue Blockers
1. Gunnar Amber
Gunnars Amber lenses were by far the best tinted lenses we tested. They block around 50% of the blue spike found in screens, which is pretty impressive and about as much as you’d want before you start entering “nighttime” blue blocker territory.
Gunnar Amber
2. Zenni Blockz Plus
Gunnar offers prescription options but if you’re willing to settle for a bit less blue blocking or if you’re looking for a bit less and want a cheaper prescription option, Zenni is my recommendation.
They of course offer tons of styles and all kinds of customizations, and have a bit better color accuracy than the Gunnars, so check these out.
Zenni Blockz Plus
3. Swanwick Day
The Swanwick Day lenses lie Somewhere between the Zenni Blockz Plus and the clearer Horus X.
These have the best color accuracy of the tinted lenses as they’re a bit less tinted than the others. They let through the most blue light, but a 26% reduction is still pretty noticeable.
Grab these if you’re looking for good blue blocking but the best color perception.
Swanwick Day
Alright, that’s it for this one folks! Check out our article on the best nighttime blue blockers if you haven’t picked up a nice pair of those yet!
First off, thanks so much for this website! It’s great!
Secondly, for the Gunnars, can you get specific which type? You simply say “Gunnar Amber”, however they have “Amber Max”, “Amber Tint”, and something called “Blue-Light Intercept”. Which is the one you tested and provided the results for here?