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Stay protected with the best safety goggles 2024

  • Protect your eyes when working on your vehicle 
  • The best simple and fully-surrounding goggles 
  • Find some that even fit around glasses

Written by Aaron Hussain Updated: 22 April 2024

They’re simple, cheap, and so utterly vital, that safety goggles are a must for when you’re working on your car with even the most basic hand tools. They protect one of the most important parts of the human body: the eyes.

Made up of the retina, choroid, sclera, and the all-important pupil, the eyes are the most fascinating and advanced part of your face. Working in conjunction with your brain and blood supply, you really want to do your best to protect them.

This is especially when working on your vehicle. It can involve sparks, intense dashes of light, heat, and if you’re working underneath, bits of corrosion, detritus dislodged by your spanners, and dust. All of these can permanently damage your eyes if you’re not careful, so a set of safety goggles is essential before any work can be performed.

The best safety goggles at a glance:

Editor’s pick: NoCry Over-Glasses Safety Goggles – buy from Amazon
Best for durability: Dewalt Safety Goggles – buy from Amazon
Best simple goggles: Radians Mirage Sleek Goggles – buy from Amazon

With all that in mind, safety goggles come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. So, we’ve sorted out the best ones in every budget and ranked them in each category.

The best safety goggles 2024

Editor's pick

Rrp: $25.99

Price: $23.99
The USP of these over some other goggles is that if you're wearing glasses, you won't need to take them off. They simply wrap around your glasses, and you can get on with your work with good vision.

They are resistant to fogging and scratching, have UV protection, and according to NoCry, can resist impacts of up to 260mph - presumably from very tiny items. It's a suitable set of goggles for anything from car D.I.Y to medical lab sessions.

Pros

  • Fits over prescription glasses
  • Durable quality and materials
  • UV and high-impact-resistant

Cons

  • Storage in the dedicated case is recommended to keep them at their best
Best armed goggles for grip

Rrp: $16.99

Price: $13.99
Made of a polycarbonate frame with anti-fog tech, NoCry's safety goggles are perhaps the cleverest safety goggles you can get on the lower end of the market. They will comfortably block 90-100% of UV radiation and are well suited to a number of activities from medical work to, of course, working on your car.

The rubber arms offer a great deal of grip around your ears, which is a neat bonus if you have to look down fairly often.

Pros

  • Anti-fog goggles
  • Scratch resistant
  • Offers UV protection

Cons

  • Won't be secure enough for some without a strap
Best for durability

Rrp: $12.99

Price: $12.14
Alternative Retailers
Walmart
$16.70
If you're not looking to spend too much on a pair of goggles that offer a secure strap that goes around your head, Dewalt has a great option for you that provides full covered protection around your eyes.

The DPG82-11 has built-in ventilation, an anti-fog lens, and soft rubber surrounds designed to fully seal your eyes from any potential hazard when working on your vehicle.

Pros

  • Durable build quality
  • Full protection of your eyes
  • Anti-fogging lens

Cons

  • Bit uncomfortable and sweat-prone
Best simple goggles

Rrp: $4.49

Price: $1.79
Alternative Retailers
Walmart
$5.50
On the budget end of the spectrum, we have goggles that exemplify simplicity. The Mirage lightweight goggles by Radians are compact, easy to store thanks to their foldable arms, and are the most affordable on our list.

They won't fit over prescription glasses, nor fully cover the surrounds of your eyes, or offer UV protection and strong impact forces like the others. But for simpler jobs that just need the most basic of eye protection, these are a great go-to.

Pros

  • Lovely and simple
  • Affordable money
  • Easy enough to store

Cons

  • Won't offer the be-all-and-end-all of eye protection
  • Won't fit over prescription glasses
Best wide-angle goggles
One of the more simple goggles on the market comes from 3M. These anti-fog safety goggles are slim, have a nylon strap for adjustability and snugness, an anti-fog coating (namesake), and a wide lens for a slightly nicer viewing angle.

They're not designed to cover prescription glasses, sadly. They're a bit slim and tight for that. However, for the money, they represent great value for a pair of dependable goggles.

Pros

  • Offer great eye protection
  • Anti-fogging pair
  • Pretty good value for money

Cons

  • Doesn't cover prescription glasses
  • Are perhaps too slim for some
Best budget strap goggles
Boasting scratch resistance, UV protection and a ventilated PVC frame, Oregon's safety goggles are a solid set of good-value goggles for any basic work you need to perform on your vehicle.

It's surrounded by an adjustable strap, which makes wearing this more secure and comfortable, but doesn't quite boast the extra protective features of other options. This is probably best for lighter work.

Pros

  • UV resistant
  • Adjustable strap
  • Ventilation holes built in

Cons

  • Is a bit compromised next to competitors

Things to remember with safety goggles

Do you wear glasses?

This is a hugely important aspect when considering safety goggles. If you permanently wear glasses during the day, you will need a set of goggles designed to fit around them, so you can see what you’re doing. If however, you wear contact lenses as well, it may not be so much of a requirement for you. Car D.I.Y is precision work, so you need to be able to see clearly.

What tasks are you going to perform?

Car jobs vary in risk and degree. But a pair of safety goggles should protect you from a variety of harmful things. From dust, rust droppings, and sparks from an angle grinder, a good pair of goggles should be capable of doing it all. However, if you’re doing anything intense with metal filings or chemicals, we don’t recommend you wear simple slip-on-slip-off goggles. There’s quite a bit of room for elements to seep through into your eyes, so we would point you towards a strap type with a full rubber surround, sealing your eyes in.

With that said, when underneath your car, a pair of simple goggles will be good enough for inspections. This is just so you don’t get bits of metal, dust, or rust falling into your eyes, which will be incredibly harmful. With specialist tools however, including torque wrenches, a more secure set is preferred.

Aaron Hussain is a commercial content writer at Bauer Media writing for Parkers and CAR. He is obsessed with classic cars and anything with a fascinating story to tell.

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