GUNNAR Review - I Was Ready to Trash These Glasses… Then They Fixed Me

IndieKev
May 29
7 min read

I know that sounds dramatic. But if you spend most of your life in front of screens like I do, you’ll understand.

I’ve been gaming since I was four, and now I work full-time as a developer. That means I’m glued to a screen for ten, sometimes fifteen hours a day, and especially during crunch. And even though, by some miracle, I still have 20/20 vision, the last few years have been rough.

At work, I’d get slammed by glare from these huge office windows I couldn’t shut. And like clockwork, by the end of the day, I’d have a migraine. Not a little headache no… a full-on brain-throbbing, can’t-focus, need-to-lie-down migraine. It got to the point where I was dreading any day in that room.

I tried everything. Eye drops. Tweaking my lighting. Adjusting my monitor. Even went to the eye doctor. They told me my eyes were fine. But nothing I did made a real difference. By five in the evening, I’d be rubbing my temples, counting down the minutes until I could stop looking at my screen.

Then a friend of mine told me I should try these glasses from a company called Gunnar.

I laughed at his face! I’d heard of blue light glasses. I’d looked into them. Most articles I found said they weren’t really backed by science. Placebo effect at best.

Still, my friend insisted. So I gave in and tried a pair.

When they arrived, I wasn’t expecting much. I figured I’d wear them for a few hours, hate them, and throw them in a drawer with all the other “maybe this will help” stuff.

So I tried them...

The first thing I noticed? My eyes weren’t burning at the end of the day. Then I realized I hadn’t had a migraine that week. And by the time the second week rolled around, still no migraine. I was like: "Wait? Is this real?"

To be fair, I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it was just a good week. That’s why I waited two whole months before doing this review. I needed to make absolutely sure that whatever was happening was because of the glasses.

Because if what I was feeling was really coming from them… that meant I’d been suffering for years when the fix was sitting right in front of me.

This had become a yearly occurence for me...

Before I even got the glasses, I thought I had already tried everything.

I mean, I wasn’t just sitting around waiting to suffer. I experimented with my lighting setup. I added soft backlighting behind my monitors. I brought in desk lamps, covered windows, even adjusted my schedule so I’d work more at night where glare wasn’t as bad.

Some of that helped, but only a little. The migraines kept showing up. Eye drops? Gave me maybe ten minutes of relief. And like I said earlier, even my optometrist said there was nothing wrong with my vision. Which honestly just made it more frustrating. I felt broken, but nobody could tell me why.

So when these Gunnar glasses arrived, I had zero expectations. They sent me two models to try: the Barron and the Dume. Both of them had what they call Amber 65 lenses, which are meant to block 65% of blue light at around 450 nanometers. That's the range that supposedly messes with your eyes and sleep the most.

Right out of the box, both pairs looked nice. Not clunky. Not "gamer goggles." But the Barron quickly became my favorite. Super clean design. Felt lighter on my face. I kept reaching for them without thinking, which says a lot because I don’t usually wear glasses.

So I started wearing them every day: during work, gaming, even just browsing late at night.

The Barron looks slick as hell! And the build quality is definitely premium.

And that’s when I noticed it.

It wasn’t just that I felt less eye strain. I started getting through whole workdays without a migraine. Then another. Then another. And when I did get one? It was on a day I forgot to wear them. No joke.

Now, part of me still thought, “Okay, maybe it’s just coincidence. Maybe I’m doing something different and don’t realize it.” So I started tracking it. I kept using the glasses exactly the same way, same screens, same lighting, same long hours.

And the migraines just… didn’t come back.

I started feeling sharper. More alert. Less drained by the end of the day. And the only thing that changed was the glasses.

So I asked myself the question I think anyone watching this might ask: is this just me? Or is there actually something going on here?

To be honest, the science is kind of mixed. Some studies say blue light glasses don’t do much for eye strain. Others say they help block melatonin suppression, which messes with your sleep. But a lot of the research depends on the lens quality and how much light they’re really filtering.

I spent an ungodly amount of time researching the subject a few years ago, but look what good it did to me...

And that’s where Gunnar seems different. Their Amber 65 lenses are designed to block a very specific part of the spectrum. Not all blue light, just the intense stuff that affects your brain and eyes the most,. That also means it doesn't degrade the colors of what' you're seeing on your screen that much either. It's not like you're just putting an orange filter over your eyes (I heard that how cheap chinese knock-offs felt like).

They also offer lenses with 20% blue light filtering, which are better for artists and designers who need accurate colors, and 98% lenses if you want full-on protection. I haven’t tried those yet, but now I’m really curious to see if they help even more. They also have a small +0.20 focus-lens power which reduces eye-strain and actually makes things sharper at close range. For me, I'm spending hours on end reading code on a screen, so it's a godsend.

Here’s the thing though, I’m not here to give you a science lecture. I’m just telling you what happened.

I really like that GUNNAR just doesn't go surface-level with the detail though, and actually have a patented rating system, and are clinically-tested.

After two months of using these glasses daily, my migraines basically vanished. My eyes don’t ache at the end of the day. I sleep better. I focus better. And the only reason I’m even talking about this is because I was genuinely shocked it worked.

I expected nothing. And I got my life back.

So now, two months later, here’s where I’m at:

I wear the glasses every single day. I don’t even think about it anymore, it’s like putting on socks. If I forget them? I feel it. Not instantly, but that slow build-up starts creeping in, and I know what’s coming.

It’s wild to think that the product I was ready to laugh at ended up being one of the biggest quality-of-life changes I’ve ever had. Not because it was flashy. Not because it was overhyped. But because it just… quietly worked.

I didn’t change my routine. I didn’t install some expensive new setup. I didn’t take pills or try weird wellness tricks. I just put on a pair of glasses. And the difference was huge.

And here’s the part that really sticks with me: I almost didn’t try them. I was so locked into my own doubt, so sure that I knew better, that I almost missed the one thing that actually helped.

I'm actually curious if the 98 Amber lenses would even help more than the ones I already have! It feels like a pair that would be perfect for late nights, because the 65 Amber pairs still don't seem enough when working overtime at 2 A.M! I also kind of wish I could have either Barron or my new favourites, the World of Warcraft Alliance edition glasses with these 98 Amber lenses.

So yeah, I’m not afraid to say it now: I was dead wrong.

I thought these were snake oil. And they turned out to be the thing that finally gave me relief after years of dealing with migraines, screen fatigue, and feeling like I was breaking down every time I sat at my desk.

And if you’re dealing with that same stuff, even if you’re skeptical like I was, try a pair. Just give it a week. You’ve got nothing to lose but some pain you might not even realize you’ve been carrying.

Because the truth is, when you stare at screens as much as we do, your eyes take the hit long before your vision starts to go. And if there’s something this simple that can help… why not give yourself that shot?

I’m not saying it’ll be a miracle for everyone. But it was for me. And if it helps even one other person the way it helped me, then this post was worth making.

So here’s what I’ll say: if any of this sounds familiar, if you’ve ever ended a day rubbing your temples and wondering why you feel like garbage, try these glasses. You might be surprised how different life feels when your eyes aren’t constantly under attack.

We have take care of those eyes. We only get one pair!