i get tired over this "are your eyes only worth 10$" sh*t. so, are your eyes only worth 100$ instead?
protective googles are NOT rocketscience. protective googles are NOT expensive to produce. research and certification is expensive, but this has almost nothing to do with what you finally hold in your hands. i wouldnt trust *anything* protecting my body from permanent and in this case dramatic injury without testing. not my 10$ 405nm-protective googles nor my (effectively) 200$ multiwavelength googles from oem.
for gods sake, test your googles, and get whatever suits you! not everyone can or wants to spend that much money. some people need a different "size", i wear prescriptive glasses under my googles for example. some people want *all* light blocked (fluorescence), some people want to see a bit to focus for burning.
what simpler than testing unknown and uncertified googles? shine your laser through it. anything comes through? how much? they are 10$? get several different, test them, keep the best! bleaching? "catastrophic dye breakdown"? what then, simply watch how long it takes for your laser to get through! certified googles hold up for 10 second and may or may not leak dangerous laserpowers after 10 seconds.
now anyone tells me any fact that speaks against uncertified googles tested this way, where nothing gets through after 10 seconds, when shining right onto the googles?
there are only two problems, which are common with certified ones: green lasers mostly leak IR, which probably isnt filtered by most googles. second, you may get stray laserlight into your eyes from a weird angle, if the googles dont fit without space to your face.
the most important thing for me is: get googles! if there are only 100$ googles, most people wont get them, or only after playing with lasers for months already. second: if they are possibly 10$, get more of them! enough for all friends which may watch you with your laser!
you people crying for certified googles do more harm than help. in the right intention, but nevertheless. its not like we are talking to adult people in a lab with 100k$ laserequipment.
*edit:
two more things: you can test your googles with exactly the laser you use.
and finally: laser protective googles are nothing like "sun-watching googles" made to stare into the sun at an eclipse. they are there to block the 0.5s of accidental laserexposure.
/rant
manuel