Probably because of legal restrictions. We are talking about a large U.S., public company that is not going to put itself at risk for some hobbyists.
I am sure there are some ANSI or similar rules for laser safety glasses that require things that these glasses might not do - like withstand a direct, focused hit of 100W CO2 laser without melting for ten seconds or something like that.
I do not KNOW the answers to any of that. Those are my beliefs.
What I do know is that a company I trust says they block the wavelengths for 405-532nm lasers and in my personal testing, with several lasers of known powers and wavelengths, they do an amazing job of filtering those wavelengths to a level that I consider acceptable.
If you can afford to get OEM brand (or some other reputable, certified goggles) for yourself and all of your friends that you might have over, then by all means do so.
If you were just going to ignore laser safety goggles, then I think these are much better than not using goggles at all.
I have personally seen on this forum respected builders who have admitted to having no goggles at all, or using cheap goggles similar to these and even one video of a seller testing >2.5W 445's on video with no goggles at all!
These have to be a better option than that.
The people who argue against them are perfectly ok in doing so. Ideally we would all have a half-dozen glass, certified safety goggles for ourselves and our friends to cover every wavelength we owned and also cover us for any ir leakage that might occur.
But for someone who might have been playing around with high power lasers (405-532) with no glasses, these offer an inexpensive option that they might actually use.
I am new here, and dont want to get into an argument with anyone(yet), but have read through a lot of this thread, and although I am not a laser expert, I can give an analogy that I think is a great parallel to the point you have repeatedly tried to make, and should help explain/justify that point.
This does not involve lasers, but it does involve potential eye damage.
I was working for a lawn mowing company back in the early 90's, and although the owner has now built the company into a much larger business, back then it was just 3 of us. I was there for 1 year.
Anyway, we used high powered, professional weed wackers after mowing to do the trimming, and the owner had idiotically removed the trimmer guards from behind the base of the trimmer head, where the line spins at high speed, making it more dangerous(but not increasing the effectiveness of the trimmer at all!).
So we were 'advised' to wear safety glasses, but the owner did not provide them, so it was 'optional' and we had to buy them for ourselves.
So I bought a pair of heavy duty safety glasses, built for a certain level of toughness, and I wore them most of the time. But when we were using the weed-wackers, we'd have debris being picked up by the trimmer line and thrown back at our bodies and into our faces.
A new guy started working there, and the first day, I told him he should buy safety glasses. The next day, he showed up, but with no safety glasses. So, although I didnt have a spare pair of "official, safety tested, certified safety glasses", I did have a cheap pair of sunglasses. So I gave them to him to use til he would hopefully buy safety glasses the next day.
That was fortunate, because about 4 hours after we finished mowing this apartment complex, we then spent another 3 hours walking around with weed-wackers doing the trimming. During this time, his weed-wacker picked up a large piece of broken glass, and flung it at high speed into his right eye!
It slightly cracked the lens of my sun glasses that I'd lent him, but it completely protected his eyes. If he hadnt been wearing them, there's no doubt he'd have been permanently blinded, and he'd still be blind in that eye today!
So, granted, those shades I lent him weren't "official" or certified, they certainly did save his eyesight, and they certainly were better than nothing..
That seems to be the point of the thread, that some people(like many of us here when we were younger), will not take the necessary precautions sometimes, and if safety equipment is hard to find or extremely expensive, many people will simply go without it, to their own peril, and end up injuring themselves, unnecessarily.
So if people who get into this hobby end up using this particular set of glasses, because they were cheaper, then they are certainly safer than they would be if they choose to use no safety glasses, because they cant find, or cant afford a $160-$300 pair of certified laser safety glasses.
But I can also see the point made on the other side that they'd be better off with the more expensive, proven pair. But remember, something is better than nothing!
I think the term for this type of thread is "Harm Prevention"
