The One Product You Should Buy Online: Eyeglasses
huffingtonpost.com
huffingtonpost.com
1. won't pay if you injure your eye
2. doesn't spread any risk over a population
Instead of reducing risk, vision insurance simply spreads a known cost over a period of time. If each customer would pay $240 / yr on eyeglasses, it allows them to instead pay $20 / mo. That is not insurance -- that's a payment plan!
So, why does it exist and why does it increase price? Very simply, vision insurance can be provided by a company to its employees and deducted as an expense. This allows the employee to avoid paying personal income tax on wages, which would happen if the $240 were provided directly to the worker. Thus, it is cheaper for the company to provide vision insurance than to increase wages to provide $240 in after-tax take home pay.
Because the money tied up with vision insurance can not be used for anything other than glasses (e.g. you can't cash out a vision plan and spend the money on video games or travel), there is no incentive for the end customer to spend less on glasses. They will want to spend as much as possible while still remaining below the maximum budget from the plan. As a result, this distorts the normal financial incentives in a marketplace.
As a result of the favorable tax position and lack of cost incentives, vision insurance inflates the price of eyeglasses and exploits a de facto subsidy from the taxpayer to the eyeglass company. This increases the profits of the eyeglass company (owned by Luxottica) at the expense of the consumer (and to the detriment of anyone who buys their glasses out of their own pocket)
(I think people should be able to get good quality affordable medical care for health conditions they already have! Just saying it doesn't make any sense to expect literal 'insurance' to cover it.)
Eh, not really. If I'm in remission from cancer, I'm not actually sick right now, but I've got a pre-existing condition because the cancer might recur. If I've got hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, I don't necessarily need any medical treatment now, but I'm at elevated risk of developing atrial fibrillation or suffering a stroke in the future.
The way health insurers treat "pre-existing conditions" is mostly about improving the profitability of their risk pools rather than protecting themselves from people who buy insurance after the fact. They use a plausible-sounding pretext to avoid having to insure people who might actually claim on their policy. It's one thing to exclude a specific chronic condition from coverage, but it's quite another to refuse to insure people altogether simply because they've had health issues in the past.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09...
Some optometrists add +1.00 to your distance prescription to obtain your computer prescription. Some perform a separate eye test at laptop/monitor distance. There's also a calculator here: http://computerglassesrx.com
If you wear contacts for hours at the computer, you can try cheap drugstore reading (plus) glasses over your contacts, close to the +value from above calculator. Once you know what strength works for you, buy better quality readers from sites like readers.com, peepers.com, etc. Or make custom ones with your near PD and preferred frame at Zenni, EyeBuyDirect, etc.
This iOS app can help with PD measurement, remember to hold the phone at the same distance as your laptop/monitor: PD Meter | Pupil Distance Measure by GlassifyMe by GlassifyMe https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pd-meter-pupil-distance-meas...
They're not just for near-sighted computer users; anyone whose vision is less than perfect will benefit. I don't recommend just adding +1.00 to a distance prescription, though. That may get you close enough if you're young and your eyes are still able to focus at different distances.
I'm old enough that my eyes have lost most of that ability, plus I have astigmatism. So my computer prescription has to be spot on. Even an inch or two off will make it uncomfortable.
I bring my ThinkPad to my optometrist at each visit so we can use their test lenses to see how the prescription will look.
I use a 24" 4K/UHD monitor in the office in portrait mode next to the ThinkPad 14" WQHD, with both displays active and using the ThinkPad keyboard and TrackPoint as usual. I put the second monitor at the same distance from my eyes as the laptop display, on an AmazonBasics (Ergotron) monitor arm so it's easy to adjust.
Both are IPS high-DPI monitors around 200 dpi. It is glorious to be able at my age to easily see the difference that high DPI makes, thanks to the computer glasses.
Portrait mode is really nice when combined with the landscape laptop display. An entire PDF page or other lengthy doc fits on the screen readably, or an editor window with 100 lines of code visible.
I also have a pair of progressive lenses for all other use - including reading things on my phone or other devices and in print. Progressives are terrible for computer use, though. I cringe when I see people using them and tilting their head back and moving their entire head around to get part of the computer screen into the tiny sweet spot at the bottom of the lenses. OTOH they work fine for phone use, Kindle or book/magazine reading, etc.
I've always gotten progressives with magnetic clip-on sunglasses. These come as a set with the frame and the matching clip-on. They are much nicer than the generic clip-on sunglasses that are made to work with any frame and literally clip on to them. The magnetics are getting hard to find, though. At my last optometrist visit a year ago we only found one Flexon model. But one was all I need!
I always wear aloha shirts or similar shirts with a breast pocket. If I'm out with the sunglasses on and go inside, I just snap off the sunglasses and put them in my shirt pocket facing outward. Don't need a case or pouch; the cotton shirt won't scratch the lenses, and the curve of the sunglasses fits the curve of my chest so I hardly notice they are in my pocket.
A separate pair of dedicated prescription sunglasses would be much less convenient.
And are you also saying that a lower dioptri prescription for starting a foot away from computer monitors is more healthy than with eg full correction contact lenses?
The app is only to measure your PD, which is needed to order lens and find a good-fitting frame. Ideally, you would pay to obtain your PD from a local optician using a pupilometer or other instrument. After Luxottica merges with Essilor in 2017, Lenscrafters may start providing local fitting for Essilor-owned online sites like FramesDirect, EyeBuyDirect. Warby Parker has already unified their online/offline services.
Yes, a lower prescription (which provides 20/20 vision at the target focal plane) is always more healthy than the stronger prescription needed for driving and other distance viewing. For one thing, text will be bigger.
Until the advent of affordable, quality online eyeglasses, most people could not afford dedicated computer glasses, so it was not widely promoted by optometrists. If you ask, they will tell you. Now, most developers can afford developer glasses.
Personally I use multifocal contacts (the concentric kind), which help a lot with near vision, but I still use reading glasses.
My opthmologist came up with my CG prescription by dividing my distance prescription in half. It works well from 18 inches out to 3 feet, or so.
After all was said and done they ushered me into their eyeglasses store which was physically connected to their office. A nice friendly man told me the frames start at 299 and go up from there.
I said thanks man with this eye exam I can barely open my eyes so I’ll come back.
Got two pairs of awesome glasses from Zenni for $55 total.
I’ve read this is online movement is destroying the career of optometrists. Also the eyeglasses scam also seems to be connected to Luxottica which is a well known sunglasses scam also. I will continue to buy from Zenni
The ones I have now were $70, are more attractive, more comfortable, and so far have lasted over a year. I did get them at the optometrist but they were on clearance and were only a few dollars more than if I'd gotten the same ones online at Zenni.
If you want to go old-school, see http://shuron.com, the last major US frame manufacturer, since 1865. They still make frames in many different sizes for each style, instead of modern one-size-per-style manufacturing. They offer lenses (including glass!).
Even if they did fall apart after six months, it's more affordable to replace them than to buy new Ralph Lauren or whatever frames for $300 apiece.
(How about not letting your toddler run amok all over your face, Dad-of-the-Year? naysayers might criticize. And they might be right, but you can't win every battle.)
Even if it's true, so what? Glasses online literally cost 80-90% less than in a brick-and-mortar store. Even if you break several pairs a year, you're still saving money.
If you simply must buy branded glasses, you can buy those online at a hefty discount over the brick-and-mortar price.
BS, the expensive and the inexpensive ones are all made with the same techniques in the same factories across brands.
Zenni and the like use terrible materials with bad abbe numbers leading to chromatic abberation. They push 'thin' but what thing really means is high refractive index and generally low abbe number. Even their 'normal' lens material has a bad abbe number.
So, get your frames online cheap. Then take them to your actual optometrist and get lenses made of good materials put in.
EyeBuyDirect and FramesDirect are partly-owned by the world’s largest lens manufacturer Essilor (soon to merge with Luxottica), so their lenses are very similar if not identical to those sold by local opticians.
I’ve bought -6 sphere -2 cylinder from EyeBuyDirect. Their default fitting height for optical center did not work for my face size (easily verified by moving the frame up and down to find the clearest spot). Once I had the correct measurement, they remade the glasses which worked perfectly.
My dad also has some vision issues requiring prism correction and high diopters. He's also a big fan of the budget and online retailers. Seems to be good enough.
But what I read just reads like a lengthy ad.
Also, "only"? I know it's HuffPo, but come on. How about electronics? Where am I going to find a few 74-series logic chips in person? How about materials like PTFE? None of my local plastics stores carry it.
Sorry, am I sounding like an ass? I feel like that was sort of an ass-y thing to write. But these 'submarine' pieces really bug me.
I had trouble reading it period. It was overflowing with superfluous flowery prose, in other words[1], it was too wordsmith-y for its own good. It's a HuffPost piece about the advantages of buying glasses online in 2017, it doesn't have to sound like a tabloid magazine article from 1896 to draw in the modern reader.
[1] It was at a point early in the article where the author felt the need to say "in other words" and provide a dumbed down version of his previous sentence that I decided to stop reading for my own sanity. Next time, leave the thesaurus on the shelf please.
What would a positive product review that didn't read like a lengthy ad look like?
But the industry is currently so ubiquitously predatory and deceptive that any sort of advertising sets off blaring klaxons in my head. At least, when/if I recognize it as an ad.
But that is exactly what I'm asking: how do you tell the difference between an ad and a positive review written in good faith? In particular, how do you tell the difference between the kind of advertising you yearn for, that "earnestly connect[s] people with products that might improve their lives" and a positive review written in good faith? And if you can't tell the difference between the two, then what exactly is the problem?
My point is that while I agree with you that modern advertising mostly sucks, I thought this article was pretty useful. I wear glasses, but I've never bought them on line because I was under the impression that Warby-Parker was the only game in town and I hate their frames (I like rimless metal frames and WP only had plastic the last time I looked). This article prompted me to take another look, and in particular it led me to two sites that have exactly the kind of frames I like at less than half what I paid at my optometrist. So this article was tremendously useful to me. Why should I care if it was an ad?
But I have been trained to see 'ad = bad', and I've been jaded with how ads have seeped into every part of every form of media. I guess I'm willing to forego the occasional good-but-unsolicited recommendation in favor of caution, which might not be the best attitude.
But it's still an attitude that I have. Chalk it up to the bad actors.
Some caveats:
* We picked the frames from a physical store first and didn't buy there. Sort of dodgy of us, but their prices were insane.
* We tried to do the pupil measurement on our own, but every time we tried, we got a different number. So he went to a optical shop to have the measurement done. The shop did it for free and we were taking advantage of the brick and mortar presence.
So yes, appears to be completely doable but I don't think we would have been happy with the final product had we not had access to a local shop.
At this point, I gave up. Of course I was doing something wrong. Without a repeated measurement I didn't have confidence to base an expensive purchase on my work.
- where the subject is looking. Make sure they are looking at leat 4 or 5 meters out, not at you taking the picture! Your pupils get slightly closer and further depending where you look
- where the ruler is. Make sure it is at the same level as your eyes, in terms of distance from the back/front of your head. Make sure the ruler is as close to 90 degrees to the nose as possible, as parallel to the eyes as possible
- make sure the camera is as parallel to the ruler as possible
Also I find printing out one of the pic (just b&w on a regular laser printer) can be easier to measure, as opposed to do it on a screen.
Prior thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15154066
I picked up glasses at Costo in 2016 and the cost was $237 which included an exam. Here's the break down:
- $49 eye exam
- $39 for the frames
- $149 for the prescription lenses
- $0 hard case and a microfiber cloth (it comes as a bonus)
I paid a premium for the lenses because they are of the light weight material that's also scratch resistent and turn into sunglasses when exposed to UV light. The transition lens coating alone was like $49 but since I go outside a lot it's totally worth it.
These were 1.50 index cr-39 which is fine for my light prescription. But higher index lenses are only a few dollars more.
I can't find my receipt so I don't know my exact prescription but I know it's single vision and I'm near sighted.
I'm not sure if I'd consider my prescription light, but I was eligible for the super thin lenses if that says anything.
.. and/or insanely profitable if you can vertically consolidate the supply chain and exclude/delay competitors from your closed ecosystem, e.g. Apple and Luxottica.
It's also good for your eyes to have a small amount of UV exposure, at least a few mins per day, so take off your glasses for short periods when outside. Everyone who does not wear glasses and is not wearing sunglasses 100% of the time is receiving some UV exposure.
First, get familiar with your lens choices.
Drivers
Readers
Single Vision
Progressives
Bifocals
Clear
Tinted
Transitions
Materials
Trivex (I'm a big fan of Trivex).
Polycarbonate
Your prescription must fit in the material's range
I have Trivex single vision readers and tinted Trivex single vision drivers. I'm near sighted and I told my optometrist to give me a reader prescription set for laptop distance. I've also settled on a frame, Flexon 623.
I imagine I could spend a ton on personalized prescriptions but my normal prescription is insanely good. I'm lucky. Personalized prescriptions (free form, ...) are great for people with difficult prescriptions but unnecessary for the common case.
Zenni (China lab) has Trivex lenses for $20/pair.
None of this is NHS subsidised as far as I know (you can get free glasses on the NHS but it only applies to children and adults with certain medical conditions or low income).
I buy glasses once every 3 years to update prescription. The extra cost therefore is approximately 50 bucks a year (assuming I pay 300 at shop versus 50 online).
If I need an extra pair (which I have not needed) then I can consider buying online.
I used to only buy glasses from wal-mart or other cheap alternatives and went through 2-3 pairs a year (I am clumsy and my lenses are thick, a tough combination for durability). Customer service aside, I found the larger pricetag has had a huge psychological impact on me not being negligent to the item... funny how that changes if i perceive something as 'disposable'. I'm not proud of that fact, or of the prices I've paid in the last 8 years; but I've only had two pairs of glasses in that time -- a huge improvement from when I was a child/teen. In fact, the last pair I owned are still intact but I simply wanted a new design.
I will probably give online glasses shopping another time when this current pair is exhausted. Which could be a while, and i anticipate huge advancement in visualization capability by then!
Have ordered a few pairs for family and they are all happy with them. I didn't tell them how cheap they were though.
They know. If they were to charge more another Chinese competitor would step in, and customers would be less likely to give them a try because of the risk that is part of the AliExpress experience. It's just how the AliExpress economy works.
FWIW I’m also super nearsighted so I might be an edge case
If the WP lenses give you a headache, most likely the PD or fitting height (vertical location of optical center) is wrong, so you are looking through the distorted part of the lens. Even a few mm offset can cause this. Have you tried moving the frames up/down and side-to-side to see if the vision gets clearer when looking at distant text? Do this with each eye separately, then both eyes together.
Take the WP frame to a local optican and pay them a few bucks to tell you (a) the actual fitting height on the WP lens, (b) the correct fitting height (pupil location) for that frame on your face. Then email WP and ask them to remake the glasses with the correct fitting height. If they won't do that, try EyeBuyDirect, who will.
I think the value tradeoff — $95 vs $300+ - is probably right. To be sure, I like the WP service, just wished there were ways to get better quality lenses even if it meant $100 more, though that would probably dilute the service for its core user base
One of the highest quality (freeform) single vision lenses is Zeiss Individual. Costs about $300 online and $500+ offline, without frames. Very beneficial to high prescriptions.
I've not used Warby Parker so can't comment on their distortion level for high prescriptions. Did compare 39dollarglasses and Eyebuydirect, there was much more distortion with 39DG. Both provide 100% refund, no questions asked.
Essilor Eyezen lenses are digtially surfaced (low distortion), but have a small plus segment at the bottom of the lens, like a mini-progressive. They are available from EyeBuyDirect for about $100.
Call me a snob or whatever, but I like two things: high quality and local. Some optometrists in Chicago are among the few remaining locally owned and operated businesses. And there are several here who put an emphasis on selling hand-crafted Japanese frames. As a local business, they're also up for negotiations, so I was able to get some truly great non-Luxottica frames from cool people in my own community for about a 20% premium over a cheaper online alternative.
Some independent boutiques are priced for a high-end market segment who don’t have insurance that mandates Luxottica frames or specific lenses. Such independents don’t compete with Costco, Walmart, Lenscrafters or online pricing.
Meanwhile, that same pair can be had on Amazon for $160 or for $60 (with lenses!) for a similarly-constructed set of frames on Zenni or Coastal.
I’ve been advocating HARD for people to ditch their optos and buy glasses through Zenni. People get blown away when I tell them how cheap their glasses are!
Source: family works for a major optical manufacurer
However, I'm getting sick of friends who got their glasses from Warby Parker telling me that I'm a fool for buying frames from Luxottica-owned Oliver Peoples.
Some of us are willing to pay the extra money for "just a piece of plastic with a name slapped on" because we can tell the difference - it is possible for designer frames to be subtly more attractive or constructed a bit better.
But again, that said, if you don't care or can't afford it, the cheaper options are great, and I wish they had been available when I was younger.
Barton Perreira and Salt Optics are independent lines from California, with some roots in Oliver Peoples.
Prodesign is an independent line from Denmark. A few of their models have features like screwless hinges and flexible frames that cost two to three times more from designers like Mykita. Modo from NYC is also a solid mid-range independent line, frames made in Japan.
Real designer frames come, like Ørgreen are not significantly more expensive compared to what you can buy from Oliver Peoples. They are actually better, lighter, more comfy and durable than what you are wearing now.
Hell I bought my non-prescription shades from an optician. Not interested in name brands but I do like a solid product
Certainly custom-fitted glasses _can_ be excellent, but I've had less trouble with the dollar store glasses, all in all, than with my former $300 custom-fitted ones. And I don't worry if they're misplaced, since I always have several spares cached around the apartment.
But the thing that really scared me was that after a few months of wearing their glasses, my vision would start to go blurry for a few seconds at a time, and I would feel intense tingling in my eyes.
My eye doctor told me that the glasses were putting excess strain on my eyes, and I was glad I did not have any diseases.
At least for my prescription, I do need a more exact fitting.
If you have access to a skilled, craftsman local optician and can financially afford to support them with local purchases, please do so. Such opticians are rare and valuable, if only to have a reference point when comparing cheaper providers. Consumers will benefit by rejecting low-quality glasses both offline and online. We need quantitative quality tests for new glasses, regardless of origin, instead of waiting weeks or months to check for possible side effects.
If you are rolling the dice at a chain store, learn how to do your own fitting. It takes a few hours and will serve you for a lifetime of glasses.
Plus, I can try before I buy...which I value a lot (I don't want to guess at how glasses fit/look)
I had a new pair of glasses (for distance), and was struggling to focus quickly (vs old glasses). The issue was the optical center, which was 3mm too high. Wearing them lower was the short-term fix.
If self-measuring with a mirror, ensure the temples and nose pads have been fully adjusted before taking the pupil location measurement.
Which was my experience. Apparently I have an extra wide head, so even the widest frames didn't fit right. Since I only need the glasses for seeing details, it is not that big of a problem, but I spent a lot of time measuring my head and eyes to get a bad result.
Maybe Apple will build a 3D head modeling software into the IphoneX and revolutionize glasses! a new app idea!
In the meantime, I just increased font size on my monitor!
Warby Parker has physical stores where you can try on frames and they are happy for you to purchase from them online. They have an app that uses the iPhone X to measure your head, but Apple limits the camera depth resolution, so it's not much more useful than sending a photo to a good optician.
When you said the widest frames "did not fit right" and you got "a bad result", what exactly do you mean: poor vision from the glasses, slid down your nose, temples too tight/short/long, did not look good? With the current trend in oversized glasses, there are more wide frames available than narrow ones. Online frame sizes can be confusing because of "base curves", so two frames that say 55-20-140 can have different widths. EyeBuyDirect and Zenni (and likely others) provide actual frame widths, although these are sometimes off by a few mm. Frames with nose pads are easier to adjust.
It's not so frequent that an article loses me at the first sentence.
What an introduction!?! Is this true?
I wear the exact same outfit every day. I own one belt, one coat, and zero hat. I have a small selection of shoes but they all serve a different purpose. It would be extremely difficult for me to wear a different outfit every month, let alone every day.