GUNNAR Fallout Vault 33 Glasses

Written by John Yan on 12/29/2025 for

Last year, GUNNAR Optiks produced a Fallout-themed set of glasses and it came just in time to coincide with the release of the great Amazon TV show. Being a Fallout fan myself, I was really thinking of picking up a pair, but having a weird prescription and seeing how expensive prescription lenses were, I held off.

GUNNAR had a nice 30% off sale recently and this time I decided to bite the bullet and order a pair. The process to order from the site was pretty straight forward, but you do have to provide a signed prescription from your eye doctor in order to purchase a prescription set. There are no returns or exchanges when doing a prescription purchase so I’m sure GUNNAR wants to make sure to get it right when they make these lenses.

While you can currently get the non-prescription pair from the likes of Amazon overnight, GUNNAR says it takes two to three weeks from the time of your order to get it in your hands from their labs in Southern California. I ordered my pair on November 17 and had to resend my prescription to GUNNAR support on the 18th since my original submission did not have the doctor-signed prescription included initially.

My order arrived on December 1, which was exactly two weeks after I placed my order. I probably got my order right before the Holiday rush, but I was pretty pleased with it being fulfilled within two weeks from ordering to delivery.

Let’s take a look at the design. The Fallout Vault 33 glasses are a retro-futuristic design with large square-ish lenses. The frame is made of stainless steel and nylon with a gray frame and green temples. The large lenses ensure your vision will pretty much clear the edges of the frame. The various measurements are as follows:

• lens width: 52 mm
• lens height: 42 mm
• nose: 22 mm
• frame width: 136 mm
• temple: 145 mm
• weight: 20 grams

The temples are thin and have a small hook at the end that wraps slightly around the top of your ear. Having been a person that’s worn glasses most of his life, I do wish GUNNAR put in spring hinges for better durability. I don’t know how many times in my early days where I would accidentally bend the temples out of alignment because of the lack of spring hinges. No, spring hinges won’t prevent every type of mishap that can happen to make them bend out of place, but it does help prevent a lot. That said, you’ll want to be a little more careful taking them off than you would if they did have them.

The design is pretty minimalistic. There’s no radical frame shape. Other than the Vault 33 logo on each temple and the GUNNAR logo on the upper right corner of one lens, it’s pretty simple. There are just two colors to this one: green and gray. But the shape of the lenses do evoke that Fallout feel that makes it seem like it comes straight out of the game or TV show.

GUNNAR’s claim to fame is its blue light blocking lenses with that familiar yellow tint. The ones I ordered are considered Amber in their line, which they state blocks 65% of blue light. You can also order them in a Clear color, blocking 35% of blue light, or the Sun variant which blocks 90% of blue light. The Sun option is, of course, made for outdoor use unless you have a super bright room. I know some people don’t like the yellow tint when using these, but I personally don’t mind. From the pictures, the Clear does still look like it has a slight yellow tint to them, but I wonder how much you’d notice. Perhaps one day I’ll order a pair with that color to compare how much less yellow it would be against their standard Amber one. There is one more option that’s available on some other frames, which is Clear Pro, only available with a prescription. This one only blocks 20% of blue light and looks like ordinary lenses. It is a little disappointing they only offer this one in a prescription variant though.

The lenses have an anti-reflective coating on them as well as something to fight off smudges. That said, I was able to smudge up the lenses pretty easily with my fingers or my eyelids when pressed against my face too close. You can easily wipe it off, but I feel the smudge-resistance coating isn’t doing a good job in this case.

There is a slight magnification in the lenses to help bring the text on a computer screen closer to you. What I’ve seen from a YouTuber who took it to his practice was there is a 0.2 of diopters+ power. So, while not significant, it is noticeable when I put on the glasses. Text is slightly bigger, and everything does feel a little bit closer to you with the glasses on. This increased magnification can also help relieve eye strain, which, if you stare at a computer screen for long periods of time, will be beneficial.

I stopped noticing the yellow tint pretty quickly. After a few seconds, I was able to work as usual without even thinking the screen wasn’t the white color that it was projecting. Or, if you’re like me and have a lot of applications using a dark theme, you probably won’t even notice the change at all. Now people are different and some are more susceptible to the color change, but for me, I got used to them pretty quickly.

After using them for a few weeks, I did find that the glasses help relieve some of the strain in my eyes. I stare at a computer screen monitor a ton as I do software development for most of the day. The size was good for me, and I liked how the large lenses means that most of my vision is taken up by the lenses themselves. When looking straight ahead, I can barely see the frame on the left and right side of my periphery. Weight wise, they felt very light and I didn’t notice them at all even when wearing them for eight or more hours throughout the day. The GUNNAR glasses did help my eyes not feel as tired at the end of the day. Being a huge Fallout fan, the style of the glasses was what I really enjoyed.

Ordering prescription lenses for these was a little bit of a concern seeing how my prescription was really different—one eye is near-sighted, the other is far-sighted, as well as needing prism added in. Also, there are no returns. So, if it was not correct, I would have been out a lot of money. Prescription lenses are very expensive through GUNNAR. But for my first experience I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

Included with the glasses is a very nicely designed hard shell case with a metal exterior. The blue case’s design is reminiscent of some of the Vault crates in the game with rounded corners. That's on top is a Vault 33 branding that ties in with the TV show, which is Lucy’s Vault. Closing them produces a satisfying metal sound as the two halves clank together. It does not completely seal itself as I was able to peek through the two halves next to the hinges. So, don’t expect it to keep out dirt, debris, or liquid. But it will provide protection from drops and other objects hitting it when they are in the case.

The pouch that the glasses come in has the famous Vault Boy with the classic thumbs up pose. Finally, a blue microfiber cloth with the Vault 33 logo comes with the set to help clean your glasses of dirt and debris.

I’ve always been asked if GUNNAR glasses really help. For me, they do. There are some less expensive ones that you can try or pick a pair up locally so you can return them if you don’t see a change. For a Fallout fan, the Vault 33-inspired Fallout GUNNAR glasses are a fun set of glasses that has helped my days of sitting in front of a computer be more comfortable.