Smith’s IO Recon Gives Skiers a Heads Up Display

The new goggles let you eye your stats as you shred.

Back in the day, the head’s up display was the stuff of first-person shooters and fighter jet cockpits. Smith’s IO Recon snowboarding goggles puts the tech near your eyes, letting you ride the mountain like you’re Master Chief. A tiny screen integrated in the goggle’s frame shows you a host of stats that the GPS-enabled goggles track as you ride. The goggle’s GPS unit tracks more statistics than we can list here. Among the most interesting are: speed, mountain location, elevation, and hang time. It displays them all on the tiny screen in real time on the frame, so you can know exactly how fast you’re going without taking your eyes off of your line. You can even see caller ID and read your text messages in the goggles’ HUD (although we don’t recommend doing so a top speed). Tech-aside, Smith fitted in some serious tech of their own in the frame: their spherical lenses provide a clear and distortion-free view, and the Porex filter rids any fog. And don’t worry: They come with two sets of interchangeable lenses, so if you scratch the lens, you didn’t just ruin your $650 snow specs. [$650; smithoptics.com]