You would be hard-pressed to find a more advanced ski goggle than the Zeal Optics SPX Transcend GPS enabled snow goggle with spherical polarized lens. The price is high, but there’s no doubt you are getting a lot for your money. The polarized, spherical lens gives you terrific visual clarity and is extremely well-made. The goggle feels solid and looks great, without any cheap-feeling components. You never get the sense that the manufacturers cut any corners.
The GPS feature of the Zeal Optics SPX Transcend is extremely functional and an awesome technological development for goggles. You can select what statistics you want to be able to view on the screen during your activities and the goggle records every run. You can bring up your runs later with the free ReconHQ software. From there you can choose a specific run, then watch an on-screen icon trace your path while it displays your stats in real time. The software uses a Google Maps overlay to show your runs, so you can choose between Map, Satellite, Hybrid or Terrain modes to view your tracks.
One thing that I should mention about the Zeal Optics SPX Transcend GPS enabled snow goggle with spherical polarized lens is that the screen is small and only a few stats are visible at any given time, so to see your other statistics you’ll need to scroll through various screens. Also, while wearing the goggles you can’t actually “see” your own location on a map, but you can see your latitude and longitude coordinates. It’s only when you load the run onto your computer that you can actually see your route on a map.
Battery life is good but not phenomenal, and appears to last around six to seven hours. One issue with the Zeal Optics SPX Transcend GPS enabled snow goggle with spherical polarized lens is that the screen is buried a little too far to the right for my preferences. I can only see about the left-half of the whole screen. To see all of it, I have to press the nose bridge of the goggles against my face to flatten them and bring the rest of the screen into view. A part of this problem is caused by my helmet, so if you can you should try the goggles on before making your purchase, especially if you wear a helmet.
You can also turn off the display to save battery, but it’s easy to turn the goggles off by mistake. Other than that, these are a fantastic and extremely cool pair of ski goggles, and I recommend them highly to anyone who can afford them.