Basically, Jakks EyeClops Night Vision Goggles let you see in total darkness, for 90% less cost than traditional night vision goggles. Typically you’d pay $500 and up, and here you have Jakks offering them for $80. At first, I couldn’t believe that they would work. Anyway, I ended up buying them for my 10 year old, Aiden. He is having a blast playing with them, and so am I.
Honestly, at first I was disappointed with how they worked, until I asked about traditional night vision goggles and realized that night vision has its limitations, no matter how much you spend.
For one thing, it’s kind of weird that your vision comes from the center eyepiece mounted on your
forehead like a third eye. What I mean to say is that normally you see things through your eyes, but the eyeclops “sees” through it’s 3rd eye that’s mounted about 4 inches up and to the left of your right eye. This is a bit disorienting when you first use the device, but my son got used to it pretty quickly.
Another thing is that the field of vision is much smaller than your normal, 180 degree field of vision, but I learned that that’s just one of the limitations of night vision itself, no matter what device you’re using.
A final difficulty is that since you have a smaller field of vision, and you’re only seeing in infrared through one eye (the right eye) (and yes, this IS typical in expensive night vision goggles as well), you lose a bunch of depth perception. The moral here is that you don’t want to go running around in infrared mode – you’ll smash into stuff.
It’s funny, I learned from reading about pirates on Mythbusters that the reason they wore a patch over one eye was because if they were in a sword fight and had to go below deck where it’s dark, they could take the patch off their patched eye and that eye would be ready to see in darkness and they wouldn’t be night blinded. Same premise with the eyeclops night vision goggles – since you’re only seeing in the dark with 1 eye, the other eye is ready to see in normal light anytime.
On these glasses, there’s 2 night vision modes – one is 100% stealth (no one can see you) and the other one gives you better viewing but throws off a faint infrared light from the goggles themselves, so you’re not 100% invisible.
The EyeClops night vision goggles DO work very well, and for the price, they’re amazing. When I tried them, I walked around our house in the darkness and could easily see my way around, so they DO work.
If you have kids (especially boys) and if you have any mischief in your heart, I think you’ll really like this toy. They’re definitely worth it, and you can see lots of stuff you’ve never seen before. I heartily recommend them as a Christmas 2008 gift (since we’re close to Christmas).