Gamers rely on their eyes more than any other part of their body. Gaming glasses can take the edge off of glare, eye fatigue and dry eye, giving you an edge over the competition.

Used to be all you needed was a TV and a controller. ‘Course, used to be all you were playing was Zelda and Blades of Steel, sitting on the floor against one of your friends who was literally plugged into the same console as you. Now you need a couple gigs on your graphics card and 1080p just to get started with GoT. There’s a bit more to see, and if you miss a few frames, well, you know…. boom.

Gaming glasses are like baseball gloves or hockey helmets. You don’t need them to play the game, but would you really want to play without one?

OK, maybe gamer glasses don’t do quite that much for safety and performance. But they definitely can help with both. And if you’re going to spend a few hundred bucks on an ergonomic chair for that extra butt support, why wouldn’t you spend $30 to take care of your eyes and improve your in-game and IRL vision?

Eye fatigue is an actual overuse injury for e-sports

No one is at their best when they are uncomfortable or tired. When so much of your performance or enjoyment comes down to one body part, any sort of fatigue or strain can knock you out.

A survey of competitive collegiate esports players found that 56% complained of eye fatigue, more than any other other issue. Now these are gamers who play up to 10 hours a day: 3 hours during team practices, and then a few more hours that are some combination of more practice and relaxing with other games. Two-a-days, no-days-off, and all the rest. But most gamers probably have as much total screen time in a week as the competitive players, because so many spend their working day on their laptops, take their breaks on their phone or tablet, then fire up the gaming rig at night.

Eye fatigue can take a lot of forms. Your eyes might be dry, itchy or red, and you find yourself going through eye drops at a freakish rate. Maybe your vision starts getting blurry and you’re seeing double. Or you start seeing halos around points of light, especially after dark, whether that’s your screen, a star or an oncoming car’s headlights.

Or maybe your eyes are just tired. Like actual fatigue. It takes a second or two before you can focus in on anything, especially if you’re switching focus between near and far.

Whether you’re playing a video game or just watching things happen around you, your vision always seems like it’s a couple steps behind. By the time your eyes look at something, it’s already somewhere else. Instead of quick little flicks, your eyeballs feel like they are plodding around in there.

Well, eyes have muscles, too. All those little flicks, the big exaggerated eye rolls when someone says something ridiculous, even the changes in the lens that help us focus on things are all controlled by muscles. And if you use them too much under repetitive conditions without giving them a break, they’ll get more and more fatigued until they get stuck in the overuse zone.

How do gaming glasses reduce eye fatigue and improve gaming performance?

Gaming glasses do a few things that can reduce eye fatigue and some of the other eye annoyances that video games (or any extended screen time) can cause. The two big ones are reducing glare and filtering blue light.

By reducing glare, gaming glasses create sharper contrast between colors and brightness levels. This makes it easier for you to see details and focus on what’s important. That means your eye muscles don’t have to do as much work to get the job done, which means they won’t get as fatigued. And, obviously, the better you can see, the better you can play. One less excuse. Most people play video games at night, when the effects of blue light are the greatest. Blue light interferes with the body’s release of melatonin, which helps us fall asleep. If you’ve been playing FIFA for a couple hours and then go to bed, you might be laying there awake for a while or sleeping fitfully until the effects of the blue light wear off and your brain can start pushing out melatonin. When you wake up, your eyes and eye muscles are not fully recovered from the day (or weeks) before, but you still gotta go back and do it all again, which means the fatigue just builds up and gets worse – along with your performance.

Gaming glasses are in every serious gamer’s gear bag

For all those that skipped our entire well crafted body of the blog and went straight to the conclusion, to answer the question definitively, do gaming glasses actually work? Yes, we believe they do, but it’s not the ultimate shield for your eyes that most people perceive it to be. Gaming glasses can help reduce eye fatigue and help your melatonin production, but it’s not going to save your eyes from being on screen 10+ hours a day without a break! Reduction is the key word here and it’s up to you to determine whether the cost of gaming glasses can justify some help for your precious eyes.

But for those that have the haptic feedback controller, the hi-res screen (4K coming soon, right?), pretty much one of everything that Razer makes. Now take care of your eyes with some gaming glasses. Wait a sec, let’s try that again.

Now take care of your eyes with some award-winning gaming glasses. *shameless plug time*

LensDirect’s BluDefend were Esquire’s Best Gamer Glasses of 2021. The BluDefend lenses are the anti-blue light cheat code for any screen: phone, tablet, laptop or gaming monitor. If you want the amber tint lenses, we have those, too. Plain or prescription, you tell us. All of LensDirect’s gaming glasses and blue light glasses start at $29. So don’t wait until you start losing games and squinting your way through life. Level up your gaming eye wear and start reducing that late night glare, but at the same time understand that just because your glasses are amber colored doesn’t necessarily mean more W’s, however it could mean more Z’s and less D’s? (doctor’s visits) in the future.

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