Oakley's Radar Pace is the result of a collaboration with Intel to produce a pair of sunglasses which provide you with live, on-the-ride voice-activated coaching and performance feedback - as well as the top quality eye protection you'd expect from Oakley.
The Radar Pace achieves this with a myriad of built-in sensors, microphones and a pair of removable earbuds. To be precise, inside those admittedly chunky (and fairly hefty at 65g) frames, you'll find an accelerometer, humidity sensor, gyroscope and barometer. All this tech needs power too, to which end there's a battery which can be charged with any USB source by removing either of the earpieces, giving you four hours of riding with music playing, or six hours without.
As with so much wearable tech, the key to accessing and processing this data into coaching feedback is your smartphone and, in this case, the Oakley Radar Pace app (Android and iOS). The app is well thought out and works well to deliver what the Radar Pace specs aim to provide - a customisable and self-adapting training plan to help you achieve your cycling goals.
The coaching is the really the only way the Radar Pace's make sense: sure, they can take phone calls, wirelessly play music and protect your eyes but so can many other devices at a much more palatable price.
Wear them in 'freeform' function and they'll simply give you a running commentary on your performance. But even that is not reason enough to buy Oakley's Radar Pace.
What sets Oakley's Radar Pace apart is how they and their app guide you, day-by-day, workout-by-workout, to an event goal that you enter, which must be between 6 and 14 weeks away. You enter how far you can ride or run and still manage to do a workout the following day, then choose from a range of running and cycling distances, such as 50 or 100-mile sportives, and... hey presto... the app will produce a daily and weekly training plan for you to follow.
The plan and its workouts are based around the four performance parameters of strength, stamina, speed and technique, structuring in recovery with more intense workouts and periods. All you have to do is put on the Oakley Radar Paces and literally ask them "Hey Radar! What is today's workout?". Your eyewear will respond with what is planned and start it when you tell it you're ready. Want to know your speed mid ride? Just ask.
Miss a workout and the clever eyewear will adjust your plan, also using its sensors to gauge how you are responding to the training load, adjusting the plan to suit your progress. The Radar Pace will pair with heart rate monitors, power meter and cadence sensors, as well as pedometers via the industry standard ANT+ wireless technology. The first two are the most important for enabling the Radar Pace to monitor, adapt and prescribe the most accurate workouts.
As glasses, the Oakley Radar Paces are about twice as heavy as normal Oakley's but still feature the brand's excellent build quality, shatter-proof frame material, and both an interchangeable reflective and tinted PRIZM lens for sunlight, and a clear lens for low light conditions.
The Oakley Radar Pace glasses are an impressive bit of wearable cycling tech which, unlike a 'normal' pair of Oakleys, have a more limited use and target group - those with a training goal to get fit for. But if that's you, then they will get you there, probably for less than it costs to hire a personal coach.
