There are some things that every citizen should have a right to: quality health care, a job that contributes to society, and night vision goggles. Before now, the ability to see in the dark was kept only for survivalists, hunters, and, of course, the armed forces. Luckily, Jakks Pacific has finally given the country what it needs: affordable night vision for the entire family.
It seems there are two types of people on the planet: those that wonder why children would want a toy that lets them see in the dark and those that buy night vision goggles from toy stores because they're under a hundred dollars. I will admit to drooling over the Eye Clops Night Vision goggles every time I've been in a toy store for the past few months, but I couldn't bring myself to spend the $79.99 on a product that was most likely a gimmick. However, when the company offered to send Ars a review sample...
The goggles are technically a toy and aimed for children, but I found it easy to adjust the straps to fit my larger noggin. The battery pack sits behind your head, and the goggles take five AA batteries to operate. Since I received my unit in the middle of the day, I went to the only place that's pitch black in a suburban home: the bathroom. Putting in the batteries, sliding the goggles over my eyes, and then turning them on, I was excited to finally see what sub-$100 night vision looked like. I turned the power switch to "on" ...
Unfortunately, we weren't able to get good pictures of the display while in use
... and I was right; it was a gimmick. A little LCD screen turns on inside the goggles, and in the ghostly green glow of the mirror, I saw a bright light on the goggles. That's it? An LCD screen and a flashlight? Lame. Then I took the goggles off, and saw that I was standing in complete darkness, a perfect black. The light I saw was from the array of infrared lights on the goggles, and it was invisible to the naked eye. I put them on again and looked around. I could see everything!
You can flip a switch on the side of the goggles to turn on a barely-noticeable red glow on the top of the unit, and this looks like a floodlight when viewed through the goggles. That night, I grabbed a friend and explored the back yard in the middle of the night. Since there is only one screen, you lose depth perception, and the image is slightly magnified so it's hard to judge distances, but the unit does what's advertised. It provides real, working night vision. It was time for Nerf-gun wars in my jet-black basement.
If you become disoriented when walking around with the goggles—and with the smallish screen and lack of depth perception, it takes practice to move around effectively—you can flip up the plastic piece above your left eye to see things normally, though I did have problems with that flap falling off now and again. My other minor complaint is that while you can switch the view to a green mode from the standard black-and-white display, it doesn't do anything except mimic what you're used to seeing in movies when people wear night vision goggles. Unlike more expensive sets, this doesn't amplify light as much as it simply picks up on infrared light, which gives the goggles some neat properties: on the highest setting, everyone's eyes look like hollow pools of light, and your television's remote control lights up the room like a strobe light. In normal light, you see everything in full color, at regular brightness.
Despite the issues with the eye cover and the heavy strain on normal batteries, this is a very high-quality toy that can satisfy some serious geek lust. Who doesn't want to see in the dark? Testing the goggles, we turned all the lights in the room, and had my friend's wife stand ten feet away holding up differing numbers of fingers. She stood out in the goggles like a flare, and it was fun to tell her what she was doing when she couldn't see us at all. The possibilities for shenanigans are nearly infinite.
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