OutdoorMaster FALCON ZEISS Goggle Review: A Full Season of Testing

Goggles are the piece of gear people underthink. You'll spend an hour arguing about board profiles and then buy whatever lens looks good in the photo, and then wonder why every flat-light day feels like riding blind.

I've had the FALCON with the ZEISS lens in rotation for a full season now — Whistler through the winter, spring slush, and travel days on top of that. Here's what actually holds up.

The lens is the reason to buy this

This is the short version: you're paying for ZEISS optics in a goggle that costs about €140. That's the whole pitch, and it mostly holds.

What you notice isn't brightness, it's definition. On a flat, overcast day the snow in front of you normally goes blank — you can't see the difference between a roller, a shadow, and a hole until you're already in it. A good contrast-enhancing lens brings back that texture. You start seeing the terrain again instead of guessing at it, and you stop getting that low-level fatigue that comes from squinting at nothing for four hours.

The lens options run roughly 13% to 21% VLT depending on which tint you pick, which puts all of them squarely in the bright-to-mixed range. That's worth understanding before you order: these are not low-light lenses. Pick your tint based on where you actually ride, not on which mirror looks best.

The included yellow lens is a genuinely high-VLT option for very dark or night riding. It's useful, but it's not a general-purpose overcast lens — it's a specific tool for a specific condition.

Anti-fog: it works, with the usual caveat

The FALCON uses a moisture-absorbing coating plus three-layer foam for airflow. In practice it handles what you'd expect it to handle — hiking a short bootpack, riding hard, sitting on a slow chair in wet snow.

Where any dual-lens goggle will let you down is if you do something dumb with it, and I've seen this in the reviews as well as in my own gear: leave it in a freezing car, or shove it wet into a bag overnight, and you'll have a bad morning. That's not a knock on this goggle specifically — it's how goggles work. Dry it properly, don't wipe the inside of the lens, ever, and it'll behave.

Two habits that matter more than the coating: keep the vents clear of snow after a crash, and don't push your goggles up onto your helmet on a warm day. Heat and sweat rising off your forehead is the fastest way to fog a lens there is.

The magnetic lens swap is the underrated feature

The MagKlick system lets you pull the lens off and put another on in a few seconds, with gloves on, standing on the hill.

I was sceptical about magnets for a while. In use, the lens seats firmly and I haven't had one come off. The one habit I'd recommend: after you swap, press around the edge and give it a look. Seating it 90% and riding off is the only way this system fails, and it's user error rather than design.

Why this matters more than the spec sheet suggests: most people own a lens for the conditions they wish they had, and ride it in everything. A fast swap means you'll actually change it at lunch when the cloud rolls in, which is the difference between seeing and not seeing for the second half of your day.

Fit and the frameless design

The frameless build gives you a genuinely wide field of view, especially peripherally — useful when you're riding in a group or in trees and want to see what's coming from the side.

Two honest points about it:

The lens is the outer surface. There's no frame lip protecting it, so it will pick up scratches if you throw it loose into a bag with your tools and your boot buckles. Use the pouch. Every time.

And the fit runs medium-to-large. It sits well with the helmets I use and I haven't had gaper gap issues, but if you have a smaller face, try it before committing. This applies to every goggle — the only fit test that counts is your own face, ideally with your own helmet.

It's also OTG, which is worth flagging if you wear glasses. Genuinely OTG-compatible goggles at this price are not that common.

Cylindrical vs spherical — know what you're buying

The FALCON's ZEISS lens is cylindrical: it curves horizontally but is flat vertically. It's the flatter, cleaner look a lot of riders prefer.

The trade-off, and this is true of every cylindrical goggle, not just this one: a spherical lens handles glare from a low sun slightly better and has marginally less distortion at the far edges of your vision. In practice you notice this on a spring afternoon riding straight into the sun.

If you ride mostly in overcast, trees and mixed light, this is a non-issue. If you're chasing bluebird spring days into a low sun every session, it's worth knowing before you order.

Is it worth it?

Here's the honest framing. A ZEISS lens, a fast magnetic swap system, a second lens in the box, and a pouch, at around €140.

The obvious comparison is the premium goggles from the big names, which land closer to €200–250 for a comparable lens tech and one lens. The FALCON isn't a budget goggle and I wouldn't pretend it is — €140 is real money. But it's positioned in the gap where you get proper optics without the flagship price tag, and after a season I don't feel like I'm compromising on the thing that actually matters, which is what I can see.

If your budget is genuinely tight, OutdoorMaster's cheaper PRO series exists and it's a decent goggle. You're giving up the ZEISS lens, and the lens is the whole point, so I'd save up rather than trade down.

Verdict

Buy it if: you want serious optics without flagship pricing, you ride mixed and flat light regularly, or you wear glasses and want a properly OTG option.

Look elsewhere if: you have a small face and can't try before buying, or you specifically want a spherical lens for low-sun riding.

The thing I'd tell a friend: the lens is what you're paying for and the lens is good. Look after it — pouch, dry it properly, never wipe the inside — and it'll be the piece of gear you stop thinking about, which for a goggle is the highest compliment there is.

Grab them here: OutdoorMaster snow goggles — save 20% with code SPC20.