Lens review: Vassen Dolly Eye Blue

Hello people!

I'll pop a circle lens review for you all today and it's a kinda mysterious lens. You see, I bought these lenses years ago on Honeycolor and they have since then completely disappeared and I can't find them anywhere. The only reason I know for sure it was that particular store is because I have saved the order confirmation from 2015 in my emails. I will review a lens known simply as Dolly Eye Blue which, according to the identification tag on the order receipt being VDE, along with the label stating Vassen as manufacturer I can safely say that this is (or was?) Vassen's try at a copy of the hugely popular EOS Dolly Eye series. So yes, the full name of the lens is essentially Vassen Dolly Eye Blue.
Please note: This is NOT the same lens as EOS Dolly Eye.

Now let's go!

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 15.0 mm

Water content: 38% 

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

 

I feel like I did a huge mistake by completely forgetting to do any kind of side-by-side comparison of these lenses next to the real deal, aka EOS Dolly Eye lenses. And now it's too late because I already discarded them before the thought struck my mind. So the only thing I have to go by now is my memory because I distinctly remember comparing the lenses in their vials to each other years ago and noticing that yes, they are not exact copies. I might remember wrong (as I said, it's been years and this was visual memory only, I did not make notes anywhere) but I'm pretty sure the Vassen Dolly Eyes were a bit bigger in size and when you looked closely you could see that the tiny black lines that make up the patterning were also very slightly different. But other than that they were very similar and you could definitely tell the intention was to mimic the EOS Dolly Eye.

 

One lens in.

 

This is a big, cartoony, very bright and colorful lens that has the 'anime look' to it. It basically screams cosplay. The color is super opaque, there's a prominent black limbal ring to add to the illusion of big eyes and well, it's overall a cute and youthful lens. The blue color is really vibrant, unnatural and shows up well even from a distance, it's not crazy lens level nor freaky but just really costume-ish, you know? These are too extravagant to really function as a daily lens but for any funky styles they're great!

I've already mentioned it but the design is almost a complete ripoff of the EOS Dolly Eye and most people who are into circle lenses have probably either worn or at least heard of those lenses so yeah, I don't think it's really necessary for me to detail their design at this point. ^^" You can search my blog for EOS Dolly Eye reviews to compare them yourself if you want to, I've reviewed those before.

Lens photos ahead! All photos taken by me during a February noon with a cloudy sky. There's no color filters or such on the close-up photos and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible. 

 

Indoors, natural room light.

Indoors, yellow room light.

Bathroom light.

Flash photo.

Indoors, unlit corridor with distant poor natural light.

Indoors, facing a window (not sun side). Weirdly blue.

Outdoors, back against the direction of the sun. (facing wall)

Outdoors, facing the direction of the sun while standing under a shadow.

Outdoors, facing the direction where the sun would have been. (cloudy)

I wore these for my review of the Hamilton uniform that I used to cosplay America from Hetalia. These lenses had expired before I opened them so I only wore them for the photos and then immediately discarded them. That means I can't really grade comfort properly but what I can say is that, for the time I did wear these lenses, they were extremely comfortable. They were very thin despite the size, super comfortable and I literally did not even feel that I had lenses on and that's saying quite a lot because I have really dry and sensitive eyes naturally. I did see blue corners at the edges of my vision in poorer light conditions though, but that's to be expected with heavily pigmented lenses like these that also happen to have a somewhat smaller pupil hole than your average circle lens.

I ended up wearing these lenses for 1 hour in total before all photos were taken and by the comfort alone you'd never have guessed they were expired. I still really don't recommend to wear expired lenses for any prolonged time. This was an emergency solution as I did not have any other suitable blue lenses in a pinch.

All in all this was a really pleasant lens and I would have repurchased them if they had not disappeared of the face of the earth. The color payoff is amazing for costumers and alternative fashion, the design is a copy of the EOS Dolly Eye except a bit bigger in size and with a miniscule difference in details. It's a fun and bright lens, shame I didn't buy other colors of these and even more shame that I forgot I had these until it was too late to really get to enjoy them. Oh well.

Distance photo taken with my phone (because I had a brainfart and forgot to take one with my camera).

Shitty yellow kitchen light, rip. ;_;

Short summary:

Color: 8/10
Very nice, very impactful blue color. It's not crazy bright but vibrant enough for cosplay.
Design: 7/10 
Simple, cartoony style that is quite cute and very likable. Big black rim.
Opacity: 10/10 

Amazing color coverage, no doubts. On par with the most covering lenses out there.
Enlargement: 6/10
Notably big but not the biggest there is. Bigger than EOS Dolly Eye, for sure.

Comfort: 9/10 

Thin and I did not feel them at all. Slight blue corners in vision. I assume I could easily have worn them for 4-5 hours on my super dry eyes.
Naturalness: 1/10

Too big, dolly and colorful, these won't fly at all.

Thanks for reading!

Shiro Samurai out.