Unlocking the Secrets to Finding the Most Comfortable Swim Goggles

For most swimmers, the best swim goggles for open water are defined by the most comfortable swim goggles with the best fit.

Poor goggle fit and comfort rank near the top of factors that can prevent a swimmer from getting into the blissful state that marks the best open water swims. What can go wrong with goggle fit?

While competitive swimmers might  prioritize hydrodynamic qualities over comfort factors on race day, comfortable, leak proof visibility seems to amount to the most important characteristic for any open water swimmer for making the most of treasured long days in the water.

What kind of swim goggle fits you best? Long time swimmers have usually chosen by trial and error, endured several errors, maybe landing on a choice that’s only tolerable. It’s not always clear what design features make the goggle fit well or poorly.

Here are 3 design strategies embodied in newer entrants to the open water swim goggle market, to get a comfortable, leak-proof, and higher visibility goggle fit:

Customization is embodied best in TheMagic5

TheMagic5 maps the contours of your face to “guarantee a perfect fit with no chance of leakage, or suction marks”. Bold claims, backed by a 100% fit guarantee.

Most goggles are sized and specified based on an averaging of typical fit requirements across a lot of users. The Magic 5 goggle is customized to fit the swimmer’s face based on data from the Magic 5 scanning app. How does this process work?

The goggles arrive in an impressive case, complete with 4 additional nose bridges of varying size to complement the one installed on the goggles (see below).

The goggles have a very futuristic look, rather than a flat front facing lens or curved lens, a multiplanar faceted lens is intended to improve field of view and peripheral vision.

The lenses are very minimal in profile, measured as 1 3/8″ wide x 2 1/8″ high (5.6cm W x 3.4cm H) at the gasket edge, smaller than the goggles described below, and a goggle size usually associated with a focus on hydrodynamics and speed (as evidenced by the use of these by some 2024 Olympic pool swimming athletes). More to come about the Magic 5 google in a future full review.

What exactly is customized? The gasket is clearly custom cut presumably based on the scan. This is evident in the edge of the gasket defined by cut marks that around the edge of the ~1/8″ (3mm) thick gasket, as opposed to a molded thin gasket edge intended to flex and provide adhesion by suction. The lenses themselves don’t appear to be custom printed (i.e., in an additive manufacturing process).

Openwaterlog tried this with good results in the initial test swims. This good result did require the second element of customization, changing the swappable nose bridge to the best fitting of the 5 options supplied. See more about this below.

The Magic 5 also offers a lower-cost non-customized goggle.

Deep flexible gaskets aren’t a new design strategy. Long time open water swimming goggles like the AquaSphere Kayenne have relied on the margin of error provided by a gasket that is both deep enough to flex to accommodate different face shapes. The tapered edge of the gasket allows for more flex, adjusting avoiding leaks with the suction that attaches the gasket firmly around the swimmer’s eyes. Newer entrants like the Orca Killa Comfort have improved on this same concept.

But there is a new spin on the plush gasket in the Snake & Pig Basilisk goggle

Advertised as “uniquely comfortable triathlon goggle designed for the long swim”, Snake & Pig’s claimed all-day comfort is achieved with a double-walled air-cushion gaskets. Essentially, this is a gasket in the form of a thin, flexible tube of air at the edges of the lens. In this design, the double-walled air cushion gasket should improve on the flex and adjustability in fit against the skin as the deep conventional gaskets; an air-cushioned layer of air that can adapt more easily to the swimmers facial contours, and to movements of the face and water next to it. This is a “pillow-style” gasket that doesn’t depend on tension of the straps to create suction around the eyes (as opposed to the conventional “plunger-style” gasket intended to create suction).

Snake & Pig claim that the reduced strap tension and suction required to achieve a good seal is more gentle on your eye socket than a conventional gasket. Snake & Pig calls this ‘No more panda eyes’.

OpenWaterLog finds all these claims hold up in testing. The fit was truly comfortable; after the initial setup, we never found a reason to tug on the strap to deter leaking over an hour swim. No raccoon eyes followed the swim. The lenses are a relatively large 2 3/8″ width x 1 3/4″ height (5.9cmW x 4.6cmH), especially the top to bottom dimension, giving good coverage around our eye sockets with the gasket.

Snake & Pig also offer 3 sizes of replaceable nose-bridges to account for different face shapes. It was necessary to swap to the larger size to get to a good fit.  See more about this below.

Snake & Pig also offers the Junior Basilisk to fit “kids and for adults with narrow faces”. This model does not come with the swappable nose-pieces.

Lastly, it’s worth pointing out that Snake & Pig goggles come with a DIY Anti-Fog application bottle (not tested) and an improved ‘fish-tail rolling buckle’ for better one-handed adjustment. More on these in an upcoming complete review of the Basilisk.

Noses come in a lot of shapes and sizes, as does the distance between eyes. So no gasket technology can overcome a misfit goggle nose bridge that rubs continuously against the swimmers nose or lenses that don’t reasonably center over the eyes. Customizing nose bridge width is highly desirable.

Older style goggles have had varying degrees of success in allowing the swimmer to adjust the distance between goggles by designs like simple ratchet of the thin plastic strap between the goggles.

The Tyr Adult Socket Rockets 2.0 offer an improved adjustment mechanism via the silicone adjustable nose bridge, in a goggle that’s intended as a racing goggle.

But the swappable nose bridge reflects a significant improvement over the adjustable designs, in our testing. The Magic 5 and Snake & Pig interchangeables described above offer a big improvement in our search for goggle comfort.

Magic 5 offers the greatest range of choice with 5 swappable nose bridge pieces, the most we’ve seen, reflecting 5 different widths with designated sizes in the range of  to plus -2 to +2 (++, +, 0, -, –).

Replacement of the too-narrow standard “0” piece took a few minutes and small screwdriver to snap the “+” fitting piece into place. But it’s remained securely in place since then.

Snake &Pig comes with 3 pieces. Replacing the standard with the one wider piece was straightforward to do by hand without tools. The arms of the nose bridge are free to swivel in the socket of the goggle… which might prove to amount to some kind of useful flexibility.

Speedo Vanquisher 2.0 https://amzn.to/4eF7PVa  has 4 interchangeable nose bridges, in a low-profile design advertised as a racing goggle.

Several budget options (not tested) have appeared with 3 interchangeable pieces.

All the goggles above offer a variety of different lens colors, mirroring and anti-fog treatments, levels of durability, and claimed hydrodynamic profile. All of which we hope to cover in future reviews. And none of which are very meaningful when the goggle is painful and the full of water. First, get a good fit.