Alpina has a big range of new eyewear aiming to get among the best MTB sunglasses on sale, including this broad-coverage, modern-looking Rockit Bold. Its widescreen lens uses the brand’s contrast-enhancing Q-Lite coating to boost definition, a mirror finish to look cool and an anti-fog coating on the inside to resist steaming up.

A unique Rockit feature is a padded ‘Face Foam’ band across the brow/upper inside frame, where a section of (removable) padding in a rubberised coating sits just above the eyebrows and bridges the gap between goggles and glasses in terms of fit.

Slightly bendy, kinked arms use a rubberised surface on top of the ears in the temple zone and an adjustable nose bridge piece can be squished into different (thinner or thicker) shapes to suit your nose profile.

Alpina Rockit Bold Q-Lite sunglasses

The overall styling and finish are really good and Alpina’s lens is top notch regarding detail and contrast with a big viewing window something like a Smith Wildcat in terms of uninterrupted all-angle vision. The nose pads beneath this are a bit of a weird shape and not grippy enough though, and caused some real issues with stability while riding.

However they were manipulated, they always seemed to be too low on the nose rather than perched on the nasal bone properly. The outcome was the Rockits would get jiggled on the roughest tracks and eventually wobble down to the tip of the nose while descending. I think it doesn’t help that the arms seem angled poorly (as if my ears aren’t high enough so the tilt off the face of the lens is at the wrong angle) and don’t press securely against the temples, with the rubberised material a bit flexible against skin.