It looks like they deliver as well. Hard to describe their price range as they have a million options you can pick as part of the ordering process - easy to end up with something well under 100EUR though without picking all the cheapest options.
Your advice has less shops in France but it seems very interesting and I'll definitely buy from them in the future if I have to. Générale d'Optique has a very restricted choice of frames which is why your link seems better.
Good lenses are not a piece of glass (very dangerous for eyes) or just a piece of plastic, they have multiple anti-reflection and protection layers and must be very precisely done. High refractive index is also very important for a reasonable thickness at edges. So I would not go for some no-name cheap lenses. Given the math, the price of a frame becomes less important.
However this only becomes important if you have a strong prescription and buying online is dangerous if you have a strong prescription, especially astigmatism. You can send them your horizontal PD but they have no way of knowing the vertical component without seeing how the frames sit on your face (which depends on your nose and ears).
Some of the better online specialists will send you the frame with dummy lenses for you to mark your pupils on with a marker, and you then send them back to be glazed.
* A material with a higher refractive index (-> thinner glasses) and higher Abbe number (-> less dispersion). Scroll down to the "Optical Glass Selection" in this article for a diagram: https://www.edmundoptics.com/knowledge-center/application-no... - the stronger the prescription, the more it matters, but generally the step up from the cheapest material is much more significant than from the mid priced tier to high priced tier.
* Coatings (anti reflective, anti scratch / oil / water, and for sunglasses also: polarizating, and the tint itself of course, ...). These are all worth it in my opinion. I cannot praise the polarizing coating on sunglasses enough. And the anti reflective coating. "Computer vision" coatings are not useful in my opinion. Mirror coatings for sunglasses are a personal/aestetic choice.
* Glasses for people with astigmatism or with both near and far prescriptions are more expensive.
More expensive frames get you:
* Lighter, thinner frames and frameless options.
* Hinges that open a bit more than 90deg and flex back with a spring, so the temples will adapt to the head better. Better hinge materials (e.g. I've had hinges wear out).
* Titanium or memory metals instead of plastic of aluminum.
* "Aesthetics" and minor add-ons like laser engraving.
Obviously price only correlates with quality, paying more doesn't guarantee getting more.
I am not an expert.
A mix of interest, a compulsion/obsession with learning the basics of anything to make optimal decisons, and get taken more seriously by experts (it turns out all it takes to get your optometrist to take you seriously is to use words like "autorefractor" and "phoroptor"), overconfidence ("I know RF, and light is an electromagnetic wave too, how different can it be?") and I guess also frustration (what do you mean, I need to renew the contact lens prescription every year, I can only be prescribed one type and I need your blessing to try 2-weeklies from the same brand, which you would have happily prescribed instead of the dailies? No thanks, I'll just import them then.)
But really, I've just worn glasses for a long time and nothing I wrote there is actually all that deep. I may have read a few papers.
>* Lighter, thinner frames and frameless options.
Your average person is not going to feel the extra 5g from a "cheaper frame". Most expensive frames are also hilariously cheap to make at the same factory.
>* Hinges that open a bit more than 90deg and flex back with a spring, so the temples will adapt to the head better. Better hinge materials (e.g. I've had hinges wear out).
That is buying undersized glasses. The "expensive frames" are just tailoring to people in denial of their head size. Though the other problem is, it's cheaper for a brand to make more of the same undersized frame, and add a spring hinge instead of offering frame designs in two sizes. Economy of scale for stamped process frames.
> * Titanium or memory metals instead of plastic of aluminum.
True titanium is a difficult metal to work with. The "Titanium frames" are largely a scam of some titanium alloy because it's actually usable to manufacture in such small frames. The end result is those frames break all the same.
The biggest problem is titanium work hardens. It is a strong metal but it essentially fatigues and snaps like copper. Make it thin like for glass frames and you allow it to start flexing and work hardening over time. Other applications of titanium don't make the metal thin enough to allow that to happen.
>* "Aesthetics" and minor add-ons like laser engraving.
Yea you pay for the "design". Laser engraving addons are sometimes available for cheap frames tho.
Some more anecdata: The lenses' coating from my cheap unbranded glasses (plastic lenses) have begun to disintegrate/separate from the glass. My other glasses' Zeiss lenses are fine still (both being 8 and 6 years old).
Other than that, to the OP: get what you like, if you need the super thin lenses (depends on your level of myopia), go with the expensive stuff, else the cheaper lenses will also work. The more expensive coatings will filter more reflections, do you need a polarizing screen (doesn't work well with LCDs though)?. Then there's the lens material: glass (more scratch resistant) vs plastic (safer, because shatterproof). If you need two zoned lenses thats also different, and way more expensive.
Edit: oh and make sure that the eye distance is properly measured (i.e. at all), that is to make sure that the optical center is ligning up with your eye
This also depends on the frame OP wants to go for. With thicker frames, thicker glasses tend to be less of an aesthetic issue than with very light, transparent of frameless designs.
Your glasses sit on your face, are an integral part of your look, and need to last for a long time while being as clear as possible. People don't want $30 glasses because they're a piece of junk and will break on you when you most need them. You can make mass market glasses for ~$100, but I think most people want a more specialized look to their face. A few hundred dollars just happens to be the sweet spot where people get to buy a product which is purchased infrequently in a store, get a high quality item, and get good customer service/support. It's sort of like an iPhone. People want to pay a premium for a device they use every day for years which will be fast and just work. Apple doesn't have a monopoly, they just provide a better service
Beloved by hipsters all over Europe
Free eye test, glasses around £100 a pair
I personally love the clip on shades which have made summer actually enjoyable
They sell frames, but no lenses?
Anecdotally, they also seem to have pretty good quality. An optician in a country where they don't operate appraised my 160EUR Ace & Tate prescription sunglasses pair in the 400-500EUR range.
Caveat: they stock both Luxottica and non-Luxottica brands. You'll just have to guess which is which based on price and know your prescription already.
I will define cheap as anything under €30. I managed to get three pairs of different frames with three pairs of custom lenses for €55.
It explains how your insurer or your employer can pay for your eyeglasses.
I bought them temporarily but ended up using one pair for 3 years.
Of course this doesn't help if they're in mainland Europe
To check the quality, I got good brand-name frames at what seemed like a low-markup price (exactly the same as my existing frames for half the price) and their cheapest lenses, and I'm really happy with the results. I'll probably put in another order with fancier lenses.
They do not have English webface, which is strange, but they do deliver to most other countries.
39€ seems to be the cheapest.
Also bi- & multifocals are crazy cheap, IMHO. But good.
I have about 30 favoptics.
I ordered anyways, and they sort-of worked, but while rollerskating all those peripheral distortions threw me of balance and I broke my rib. Money refunded, no hard feelings.
Not sure if they are high quality. When I compared sites a few years ago, they were the cheapest
I am really troubled with the cylinder for my astigmatism. Many sites only sell glasses with 2.5 cylinder. Lensbest sold 3 diopter cylinders. The eye scanner at the optometrist said I need a 3.75 diopter cylinder. Although the optometrist said, I still get full vision with 3 diopter.
I wanted to buy cylinder-only glasses for computer work. Because my normal glasses also have spherical component against nearsightedness, but the screen is near enough that I can see everything without that and the correction is only causing eyestrain. But I cannot buy them. The cylinder is too high for the sites, and the local optician said I do not need such glasses
Just keep in mind, most of their glasses are very wide! So check the measurements.
Some of the online shops that offer cheap lenses, like Zenni won't really be as good quality as some Zeiss ones. It's about a lot more than just the blue filter and how thin they are.
Edit: add link
https://shopviu.com/en_int/viu-stores/
My partner previously also used VIU and recently had a good experience with Ace & Tate (who have been recommended already).
My glasses aren’t super cheap. I think I pay €170 for a pair with extra thin glasses. I really like the frames they have.
My partner is a full-time user or Ace & Tate and she's happy with them.
- Fielmann is likely the cheapest with in-person stores and optometrists, but of course significantly more expensive than the online options. I believe they exist in many countries, although there may be better local alternatives.
- brillen.de and brille24.de are two options that used to be decent, but may have changed in the many years since I used them (especially the former seems to have raised prices significantly). Probably only ship to Germany. One of them also used to offer local service at an optician if you needed adjustments etc.
Shipping times can be long even with "local" online stores because they have the glasses made abroad (typically on the same machines everyone else uses).
I have -6 so I get 1.7x<something> the thinnest possible.
Granted, my eyes are the one place where I'm the least likely to penny pinch so I'm definitely not gonna choose a place based on cost alone.
Bonus point, if you're into sports, it's really a great change for ball games and skiing.
They also offer polycarbonate lenses - blender plastic. I pay extra for that because I like riding a motorcycle with the visor up. They just paid for themselves this month: there's a big dent right in front of my retina from a rock thrown by another vehicle.
Now I'm a special case, due to crazy level of astigmatism glasses were always very expensive for me. For someone with more normal eyes, this might not be worth the hassle - but what I really like the most is that I can have more pairs to wear depending on my mood and if I break one pair I'm not out of Macbook money.
Anyone brave enough to order glasses with Taiwan is a country print?