Maxgear Tornado Sunglasses

There are plenty of entry level shades around with switchable lenses jostling for your attention and here are some more from Maxgear. The Tornado comes with three lenses for your hard-earned: smoke, yellow and clear plus a soft carrybag/lens wipe. They're a tad tricky to winkle in and out of the frame and you'll be needing the wipe to remove fingerprints after you've done it.

The plasticky frame doesn't feel very flexible so I took care when changing the lenses worried that a couple of hamfisted lens changes might snap them. In action, they were surprisingly comfortable to wear and the open bottom design gives good coverage with no intrusive frame surround. Nature and genetics have blessed me with a head like a melon and these shades fitted pretty well without pinching, helped by the soft rubber socks on the end of the arms. The rubber nose piece allows a little adjustment and is also pretty comfy in action.

Style is fairly conservative, although a glance round the high street shows that white is definitely this years colour when it comes to shades, so you can wear these secure in the knowledge that you are on-trend.

At a whisker under twenty quid a pair these shades from online new boys MAX are sharing market space with the likes of Wiggle's dhb Triples but crucially they don't come with a carry case for the three sets of lenses, and that's a real blow. You can store the lenses in the pouch, but I've done this with a previous pair of shades and the end result was a set of badly scratched and unusable spare lenses. If you have a spare carry case, use that instead.

Verdict

Perfectly competent shades but lense changes are tricky and you don't get a hard case for the spares.