Duco Kids Polarized Sunglasses Review: Critical Hiking and Outdoor Gear for Your Kids

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Forever the dilemma with kids outdoor equipment: good enough to stand up to the abuse that our kids can dish out - and therefore priced as such, but not so expensive that inappropriate use (sitting on, stepping on, turning into an airplane) or loss will break the bank.

We tried a lot of different sunglasses before we found the Duco Kids Polarized Sunglasses.

The truly expensive options were never an option for us because of the “losing them” and the “making them into an airplane” factors of our boys who love to build things and are very creative about “repurposing” items from around the house. And the budget options really ended up being a case study in “you get what you pay for.”

But as we looked into moderately priced (less than $20 USD) options, we quickly got into the specter of “is this one of the good items you can find on Amazon (for instance) or one of the pieces of junk?”

Eventually, the description of the flexible frames, the lenses that blocked UV and enough light for snow travel, and the shatter resistance in those same lenses all seemed like the major things we needed. I was also encouraged by the existence of a Duco website that had an independent sales channel (even if it only included the adult models of their glasses).

So, we gave it a try.

And as the video points out, we’ve been really happy with them. Those three elements I describe above are all proven to be truly there.

But why do we care so much? Was a multi-years-long pursuit of good sunglasses worth it? I think it is.

As I describe in the video, kids’ eyes just need more protection than adult eyes, due to the structure of their eyes, the lack of development of their eyelids, and the reality of the amount of outside time kids get. Here’s some information from the Canadian Association of Optometrists on this very topic. We parents have all been trained pretty thoroughly to think about skin damage and future issues if kids get overexposed to the sun’s radiation. We do sunscreen and hats and sun shirts and the like. But the eyes are less of a conversation topic. Less top of mind. If it wasn’t for my own extremely light-sensitive eyes, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to do the research on the effects of UV on my kids’ eyes.

So, now that I know, the sunglasses are always in my kids’ backpacks, if not always on their faces… we’re working on that one, still.