Nike's new sensory training sporting glasses get the T3 hands-on treatment ahead of the December Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe UK release
Whilst training your muscles to be responsive and quick to react to changing circumstances in sport is a tried, tested and perfected practice, training your senses to give you the instinctive edge over fellow athletes is a new move in both amateur and professional sports.
Pioneering these emerging fields of enhanced, tech-based, sensory training is sporting giant Nike with the Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe eyewear to land later this year as the first pair of glasses with stroboscopic lenses designed to briefly remove vision to enhance attention, timing and awareness.
T3 skipped across the pond recently, taking a trip to Nike's Global Headquarters in Portland, Oregon to bring you the UK's first hands-on Nike Vapor Strobe review.
Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe Glasses Design
Wearing glasses whilst playing ball sports is usually a recipe for disaster, however, designed for use solely in a training environment much of the risk of a fast paced knock or unwanted collision is removed ensuring users remain safe from shattering plastic.
Extremely comfortable to wear with adjustable nose pads and an elasticised and adjustable strap replacing the standard glasses arms the Vapor Strobes are secure even whilst carrying out vigorous exercise and quickly become an accepted, almost forgotten part of your training attire.
A set of curved plastic LCD lenses offer a wide field of view allowing for the essential uninhibited peripheral vision with the stroboscopic effect feeling strange at first but following a couple of hours of use do not result in the same nagging headaches found with 3D specs.
Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe Glasses Features
With nine variable modes of stroboscopic effect offering varying degrees of visibility and respective difficulty the Vapor Strobes will ensure training is given an added benefit for many months. Starting off on level one or two seems uncontrollably difficult but once the glasses are removed, foresight within a game appears sharper, even after small spells of use.
Whilst the touted 10-15 hour battery life needs more testing to prove accurate, if true it would mean the better part of a fortnight's rigorous training would be capable on a single charge.
Adding further difficulty and performance pushing features, the strobe lenses can be set to run independently allowing users to enhance a single eye's peripheral vision and balance. Far trickier than the standard dual eye strobing, the benefits or this characteristic should come to light following further testing and continued use.
Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe Glasses Performance
Whilst putting the Strobes on for the first time will leave you questioning your sanity and wandering how the stroboscopic effect could offer any possible benefit, within half an hour you will be only analysing your next move, trying to work out how to control and attack a ball that is visible only in fits and bursts.
Although the Strobes tick all the boxes for their claimed benefits from increased precision and timing to improved focus and reaction time, following first use an area where they seem to offer the most benefit is encouraging users to think two steps ahead of the game, pushing the thought of what could come next and offering an improved perspective of the relative angles.
Stay tuned to T3.com for the full Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobes review. Let us know what you make of the sensory training tool via the comments box below.
