Here's my solution:
* Buy 4x pairs cheapish glasses from Zenni.
* Beat the crap out of them.
* Replace as needed.Once you also add amenities like photochromic lenses, it quickly adds up.
I think it's something that's more noticeable when you need relatively high power lenses.
It's nice being able to grab a cheap pair of glasses for activities where there is a high probability of them getting damaged or lost, and having a backup pair handy. The reduced mental load of not having to worry is worth it!
That's for sure. I bought a pair from 38dollarglasses.com and skipped the antireflective coating option. As it turns out, if you've worn glasses with AR coatings all your life, plain lenses are really, really surprisingly annoying.
At -10.5, -11 I always get relatively low refractive index (~1.5) CR-39 based lenses because it's Abbe number is 60. This means I can still read, say, street signs or flanking computer monitors out of the corner of my eye despite the light going through literally >1 cm of material.
Most decent optical labs operate on a sliding scale, going thinner and thinner, but costing more and more. Can get quite expensive (relatively), but if you're going to absolutely baby your glasses, and use something like Zeiss single-use lens wipes, yes I think it's absolutely justifiable for something you're going to use all day, every day for several years.
About 12 years ago, I switched to rimless with carbon fibre arms to try and get the weight down as the option to go as thin as I'd like just wasn't there yet, and I was still stuck with traditional glass, so the weight was a concern for me, and my glasses were forever slipping down my nose (ugh).
Maybe 4 years ago I switched over to hingeless titanium frames (almost wire-thin) with rimless lenses that are incredibly thin and light, and made out of polycarb. Not got my prescription info to hand, but it's a world of difference what's available now versus a decade ago.
They're so thin and light now that I frequently forget that I'm wearing them, and can even fall asleep in them! Oops! They stay stuck on my nose too, I never need to push my glasses up my nose.
I thought pursuing thinner and lighter would be an exercise in vanity, but I can honestly say it's significantly improved my quality of life.
Look for "high (refractive) index" lenses. It bends light further, so you need less material / less angular difference to get the same effect.
Which is much much better than like 15+ years ago, when I had a pair that had enough aberration that I was happy to get the thicker ones the next time. It was kinda fun being a walking spectroscope, but definitely uncomfortable in quite a few cases.
Haven't changed them for 8 years now and they're 100% scratches, they lost some protective layer a long time ago from going into the sea with them. One half is glued together. I'm just too lazy to replace them.
The article mentions washing them, I have never tried this or nothing to back it up, but I suspect that may be where the problem lies. Just replace the cloth. They cost pennies.
They even go as far as to put them back in bags and such. I don't bother and have never noticed an excess of grease, dust, or anything they do. Mine is just replaced every now and then sitting openly on my desk
It's at the point where I wonder if doing less is more. It certainly seems obsessive
People may say microscratches, yada yada. It's so inconsequential that my eyes go bad before the lenses do due to my treatment.
Zenni makes their glasses to order; what do you mean?
I used to always go with Costco, but last year I tried Zenni. The frames are definitely flimsier than any others I've had, which I've heard is generally the case for their wire-frame options—I'm sure their heavy plastic frames are more sturdy, but that's not my style. But the lenses seem as good as usual. Except they polished the edges of the lens instead of leaving them frosted, which creates distracting reflections under certain light (with an Rx of around -9/-10 my lenses are 7-8 mm thick). Despite all that I'll probably stick with Zenni in future.
I wash my glasses with a drop of palmolive dish soap and warm water, then blow any water drops off the lenses. An oelophilic coating (available with Zenni) makes this easy, because the water beads up and almost rolls off.
I have lenses with an optical index of 1.61, which have an Abbe number of 41. In comparison, basic polycarbonate has Abbe 30 (horrible), high-index 1.67 has Abbe 32, and high-index 1.74 has Abbe 33. The best is CR-39 (index 1.5) with Abbe 59, but that will result in an absurdly thick lens, and I'm not sure it's even available in such a strong prescription.
I can't stand chromatic aberrations because they make everything outside of the centre of the lens blurry. This worsens my tendency for one eye or the other to wander if I'm trying to focus on something just at the edge of reading distance (road signs or restaurant menus, for example) and makes driving at night in the rain difficult. My current glasses have an acceptable amount of abberations, but my previous set was horrible.
I really should be wearing contacts and I've tried them several times, but I generally find them very uncomfortable and I've always hated how they take away my perfect close-up vision.
It was kinda neat to be a walking spectroscope, and see what different light sources produced. But the novelty wears off fast when it starts blurring and coloring text on the outer edges of computer monitors. I'm plenty happy paying another $100-200 every few years for lenses that don't do that.
Currently, if I look at any sharp contrast edge in daylight and turn my head a few degrees, it'll be lightly fringed by either blue or orange. In the dark with a three-color RGB LED projecting "white" (rather than a broad-spectrum white source) I can get fairly clearly separated dots of different colors closer to the edges of my lens.
Not really an option unfortunately, my eyes are apparently too dry.
Could you apply some kind of light paint to the edges? Maybe nail polish?
if you start adding features (like thinner lenses, or coatings), the price adds up quickly.
i usually spent $60-$120 per pair of glasses on Zenni.
An interesting thing I learned in that industry, the uncut "puck" of plastic/material is usually cut to your prescription via an CNC style machine. The cut instructions are essentially a pre-built CAD file based on your prescription/measurements. A significant cost of the process is paying "click fees" which are essentially IP to use that CAD file or a usages based tier on the CNC machine (however you want to look at it). I think, for the company I was working with at least, it was tied to the CAD file though. I recall some discussion of us changing vendors as current vendor's CAD files were failing QC checks at an unacceptable level. If I remember correctly, it was about $5 of a $20 finished good (averages for a pair of lenses). Every coating imaginable would only add $3 at most to cost of goods.
Memories from ~3 years ago.
IP/Brands drives a lot in this industry and is how Zenni is able to cut costs. A company like Rayban will partner with a lense manufacturer to put a logo on the lense and then charge $300 for the lenses. It's the exact lense the manufacturer would normally sell for $25 but now it has a Rayban logo on it. (I actually had these and ended up scratching off the Rayban logo because it was constantly visible in my periphery).
Sunglasses are the worst. They cost basically nothing to make but the profit margin is Inf% b/c of branding. A $20 (at most) pair of non-name sunglasses instantly becomes a $700 pair of glasses once you slap a few PRADA insignias around it.
I used to get my sunglasses from Goodr; they charged $25 for no-slip polarized sunglasses, which were very good. After one of the pairs broke, I decided to get two pairs of Ray-Ban Wayfarers, one for $75, and the other for $200. I knew I was getting fleeced, but I finally wanted a pair of "cool" shades and could finally get them without breaking the bank. :D
If forgot to mention sales commissions as I was talking about cost of goods. But a variable compensation for the sales person, is a lot of your cost if you are in a retail setting. Believe it or not, your optometrists gets paid commission too (if an employee) as does the person at the desk. It's a sales heavy business. Buy eyedrops, buy lens cleaner, buy here - we really don't want you to walk out the door with your prescription! We have a metric called "capture rate" that our commission is attached to!!
It's not too bad but was a surprise to learn it's much more retail than medical (as a business). I think in most the world it's not even necessary to see a doctor to get glasses, like in the US. I usually leave and buy somewhere else because my doctor just has a crappy selection of frames, every single time, he gives me the prescription when I ask. Then I have to ask for the pupillary distance and he acts like he doesn't know what that is. "Why do you need that?" Because if I buy online they'll ask, "Oh yeah, I can take that measurement".
1) The glasses have to accurately hold my the lens at a specific location and orientation relative to my eyes in order that they actually work.
Off by a little bit and it's world of splitting headaches and crazy distortion
Achieving that positioning, while dealing with my wonky ears, size of head, eye locations etc - requires knowledge beyond current web systems before ordering and - unless completely bespoke fabrication of frames as well - some form of final fitting post delivery.
- The prescription is sufficiently rare that the lens are not mass produced and instead have to be custom ground and cut to fit the frames before the glasses can be assembled.
To your second point: Zenni and competitors do custom grind their orders.
This whole article and thread has been super helpful, but I have to say thanks so much for the Zenni tip!
I was on that site all of 5 minutes before rushing to make an account.
The pages are super easy to read and informative, they tell me instantly whether the frames can go with bifocals and whatnot.
It even helped search by face type and let me do a virtual try-on.
In person places here all seemed hell-bent on upselling me, seemed to be bothered by my questions, and the prices were outrageous!
So now I can buy several cheap pairs, see which I like and then buy several copies to have stored for when I inevitably break my first pair.
I almost never say this these days but holy shit was I impressed all around!
Reading what people do for clean glasses (and as a person with OCD who sometimes gets infuriatingly distracted by the little shapes on my eyeball, much less dirty/scratched lenses), I was already not looking forward to needing these things.
With that being said, I do pay for quality sunglasses. In my experience, Zenni sunglasses are lacking.
For sure once I've found a pair I like and are comfortable I will get a nice pair or two.
I was looking into transition lenses so I'm not swapping my sunglasses for regular glasses. Quite a bit pricier but worth it, I hope. I've also seen some lenses that are supposed to help with glare from having an astigmatism and that would be a Godsend, especially at night.
So I didn't want to spend $800+ for trial frames and lenses and whatnot.
This whole thread has made me feel so much better about the process, and the timing could not have been better!
Granted I do clean my glasses (soap and water after each shower while they’re steamed up, gently towel dry). And I’m not much for disposable goods, these will last me years. But in the same spirit, I also like that Zenni accepts my expired prescription. My vision hasn’t changed enough to warrant another trip to the optometrist, so why waste the money, or my time, or theirs?
That’s what I do. And I shake the cloth beforehand to get sand from my pocket off of it. I do exactly four shakes, plus one extra swoosh that technically can’t be categorized as a shake due to its fluidity rating of 95 on the Holloway Motion Scale.
So here's the thing- I do exactly the same thing. Buy cheap classes. Use a kitchen paper towel or whatever is handy to clean them. But I have never had to replace a pair because of damage.
Every few years, my prescription changes enough to warrant replacement, and then I go and order another set of glasses from Zenni, and they always last until the next time, no matter how badly I treat them.
Lenses are not expensive. They're just pieces of plastic, just like the frame.
It always feels like a delicate act to get my lenses cleaner even with a microfiber lense cloth.