A new study in Vision Research put EnChroma's SuperX filter to the test in a task as old as human vision itself: finding a splash of color in a sea of distraction.
Imagine standing at the edge of a forest, scanning for a single ripe berry tucked among a thousand green leaves. Your eyes don't search randomly. They lock onto the thing that stands out — the splash of color that pops against the background. The bigger the color gap between that berry and the leaves around it, the faster you spot it.
That simple idea — that color is what makes things jump out — sits at the heart of human vision. It may even be one of the reasons we evolved color vision in the first place. And it's exactly what a team of vision scientists set out to measure when they put EnChroma's SuperX filter under the microscope.
What the researchers actually did
The study, “Effects of color-enhancing filters on color salience in normal trichromats,” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Vision Research by Camilla Simoncelli, Donald McPherson, Kenneth Knoblauch, and Michael Webster, working out of the Visual Perception Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Here's the important part: this research wasn't about color blindness. SuperX is designed for people with normal, typical color vision — and these scientists wanted to know whether a color-enhancing filter could give already-typical eyes a real, measurable edge.
To find out, they built a digital version of that berry-in-the-leaves challenge. On a precisely calibrated monitor, observers had to find a colored target hidden inside a busy, multicolored background — a “color foraging” task modeled on hunting for fruit among foliage. They ran the search two ways: with the colors as they normally appear, and with the colors transformed exactly the way the SuperX filter would transform them. Then they timed how long it took people to find the target.
What they found
When the background was in the blue-yellow color range — the kind of palette you'd see in a dry, arid landscape — people found the target significantly faster with the SuperX filter applied.
The reason is beautifully simple. SuperX is built to stretch the distance between certain colors, especially along the red-to-cyan range that our eyes are most sensitive to. By widening the color gap between the target and its background, the filter made the target stand out more — and a target that stands out more is a target you find faster.
In other words: the filter didn't just make the scene look more colorful. It made the brain's job easier. Less searching, quicker spotting.
The honest fine print (because good science has it)
We're a science company, so we'll tell you exactly what this study did and didn't show.
The effect was clearest on the blue-yellow background. On a different background — one varying along a purple-to-yellow-green axis — the researchers didn't see an overall speed difference. Their takeaway is that the benefit of a color-enhancing filter depends on the colors in your environment: the more a filter widens the gaps that matter in a given scene, the more it helps.
And this was a lab study. The filter's effect was simulated on a monitor using natural surface colors, rather than measured on people wearing the glasses outside. That's a rigorous, controlled way to isolate exactly what the filter does to the colors — and the next exciting questions are about how that plays out in the real world.
What the study establishes is meaningful and new: a color-enhancing filter can improve visual performance — not just appearance — for people with normal color vision, in a task that mirrors how we naturally use color to find things.
Why this matters for you
For years, the conversation around color-enhancing lenses has been about how the world looks. This research moves the needle to how the world works for you.
Whether you're tracking a ball against the grass, spotting a trail marker against rock and brush, or just noticing the things that matter a beat sooner — SuperX is engineered to widen the colors your eyes rely on most. Now there's independent, peer-reviewed research showing that widening those gaps can actually help you find what you're looking for, faster.
That's the science of seeing faster. And it's built into every pair of SuperX lenses.
SuperX lenses are made for people with normal color vision who want richer, higher-contrast color for sport, the outdoors, and everyday life.
Read the original research: Simoncelli, C., McPherson, D., Knoblauch, K., & Webster, M. (2026). Effects of color-enhancing filters on color salience in normal trichromats. Vision Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2026.108864