About METL Optix
METL Optix was started by Chad Cox, a U.S. Army veteran who served with 3rd Ranger Battalion in the 1990s. His brother, a practicing optometrist, keeps the eyes side of the operation honest as our OD on the hotline.
The idea was simple. Tactical eyewear is almost all polymer. It's light, it's cheap to make, and it doesn't hold up. Frames crack, hinges loosen, and prescription options are an afterthought. We wanted something built like the rest of a Ranger's kit: metal, durable, and made to be worn hard for years.
So we build our frames from thin spring stainless steel, manufactured in Europe and assembled here in the USA. The steel flexes to your face and springs back to shape. It's lighter than most polymer frames and it doesn't crack. Every frame is built to take a prescription, because half the people who need tactical eyewear also need to see.
And every frame is XL. We never fit in a medium. Most of the guys we served with didn't either. Nobody was building tactical eyewear for us, so we did.
Every model is named for a Ranger or a piece of Ranger history. Darby, Merrill, Rogers, Ma Deuce. That's not marketing. That's where we come from.
We wear what we sell. If it doesn't work for us, it doesn't ship.