Mother Jones - Comments for "Progressives"

Progressives

Oops - that should have read "The old pair doesn't have that, there are NO discrete regions.".

Progressives

Sorry if this is a re-post, not sure what happened the first time.

I bought my first ever pair of progressives about 2 years ago. I *LOVED* them, they were/are the best glasses I have ever owned (3+ decades). I misplaced those after they fell apart. This year I bought another pair and I *HATED* them, even though the prescription is nearly, if not exactly, identical. I told the tech they were "wrong". She insisted that I "get used to them".

I found my old pair and compared the two. If I look at the under the light just right, I can see that the new ones have a circle in the center and regions of concentric blobs about that circle. The old pair doesn't have that, there are discrete regions. Everything is smooth. I brought both pairs back the office and asked what the difference was between them. The new pair that I hate are Ovation, and the old pair that I love are AO Compac (my best transcription). There is a difference in technology here that is absolutely NOT working for me. They fixed my old glasses so I can wear them again, but considering how expensive these things are, I'd like to be able to use my new pair too. "Getting used to it" doesn't cut it.

Progressive lenes are so

Progressive lenes are so easy to get used to. There are MANY brands that have quite a difference in end user experience.

Don't buy cheap progressives, you actually get what you pay for. Now before you complain you spent $450 dollars on your new glasses, guess what, thats cheap.

A good brand(set) of progressive lenses will cost you $300-$500 dollars. This includes thinner materials and AR coatings. Get used to it!

I have had MANY progressive lenses and most are great. Only 1.5% of people DON't adapt so if you didn't adapt you bought crappy lenses!

big lenses

"Progressives work better if you have big frames with big lenses..."

well maybe, if you like getting your neck exercise at the same time. I've found lenses with a small vertical extent much easier. it's true you have to aim accurately, but it takes less movement to get there, so you don't look like one of those bobbing head rear window ornaments.

as far as the computer goes, I'm one of those people whose close focus ability craps out just a little inside the screen, so I just don't wear glasses at all when computing, i.e. I can focus just fine out there at arm's length (whereas a younger me could focus at around four inches). far away, e.g. driving, I wear progressives because I've never been able to see at long distance, and the short side of the lenses works at distances that otherwise would be in the dead zone where I can't see either with distance only or no glasses.

who says "where you don't look anyway"?

Anonymous wrote, "You'll get a little more blur on the outside lower edges (where you don't look anyway)...."

Progressive lenses are designed to have a large region of significant blur to the sides of center. Anonymous may not look there, but others do, and it can be very frustrating.

Progressive lenses are not what you might think they are. You might think there is a region at the top with a constant focus for infinity, a region at the bottom with a constant focus for a close reading distance, and a region in the middle where the focus gradually changes between the close and the distance sections. That's not what progressive lenses are. A progressive lens has no region of constant focus. The focus changes everywhere. This results in a very narrow telescope of correct distance vision, as Kevin noted. None of this was explained to me when I ordered progressive lenses a few years ago. I am amazed that anyone can stand using progressive lenses, given these problems.

I strongly suspect that satisfaction rates are incorrectly measured by number of glasses retained (i.e. not returned) by the customer divided by number of glasses initially delivered to the customer. This calculation is upwardly biased by two factors: First, many dissatisfied customers never return their glasses. Second, people who are unhappy with their first pair usually don't order a second pair, but people who are happy with their first pair become repeat customers.

There can be a huge

There can be a huge difference between one prescription for progressive lenses and another.

I have used them with great satisfaction for years. But a few years back I got a pair that were an absolute disaster - all the problems listed above.
It turns out that the optician, in an attempt to make the lenses thinner, had adjusted the 'base curve' of the new pair. I absolutely could not use them: I had the glasses redone, with the original 'base curve'. Problems - all of them - solved.

How exactly you can *find* the right base curve for you I have no idea. And I'm sure that if my *first* pair had been so problematic, I would have given up on the idea myself. Luckily my first pair were a delight, and from then on I knew that they could work for me.

Monovision

I've had a tremendous experience with monovision contacts (soft). My left (dominant) eye is corrected for distance & my right for reading. I've had them for about 10 years -- with some increase in correction -- and have had great success. No more lost reading glasses, no more "wrong" glasses with me, no more neck strain on the computer.

My "reading" correction is for roughly the distance of a computer screen, so when I read the printed word, I have to keep the book/paper at the "right" distance. But I can switch immediately between reading/computer/TV/driving/etc.

I can't do close detailed work with either correction. For that, I use no glasses and keep the work very close.

Some people can't seem to get used to it, but I'd recommend you give it a try. I'm able to wear the contacts from 1st thing in the a.m. to last thing at night.

Good luck.

On Line Options

I was amazed at the prices for glasses on-line compared to my local optician. I have a pretty basic single vision prescription and the entire frame and lenses purchased online were less than my ($25) co-pay for my company vision plan. I normally like to buy local, but a 90% discount changed my mind. Buying on-line makes various glasses types cheap enough that you can experiment with different types without feeling like you are wasting money.

If you experiment with monocular vision

Choose your dominant eye for far vision and pop the lens out of the non-dominant side.

You'll need to give your brain a couple days to adjust to it, and it may seem hopeless at first, but trust the remarkable adaptive capability of your brain.

Will you not even consider contact lenses? I find them extremely convenient and cheap, I'm less prone to misplace them, and they have less distortion and give better peripheral vision compare to glasses, especially glasses with small lenses.

Tripp

bifocals

When you get your bifocals, take care on the stairs until you get used to the new glasses. And take special care at the computer. After a few years of tilting my head back to see the screen, I wound up with calcified neck vertebrae in the upper back and neck. (Possibly less of a hazard if you use a laptop.)

progressives

I've had mine for about a year and a half and they're great. It took me about two days to adapt to them. I'm farsighted, and my primary interest was in getting a pair of glasses for driving (distance and dash in sharp focus) and hiking. They're really of no use for steady reading or for computer work, as you need to move your head a lot, though for reading in a pinch, mine are very sharp. However, you have to watch the price - more expensive is better.

Don't do that. The only way

Don't do that. The only way you can do monovision is with contacts--the lack of focal length with contacts keeps things from getting too magnified for your brain to handle.

As for progressive lenses, don't give up. They get better literally every year, and it's entirely possible your optician picked the wrong kind for you. You laugh, but it does matter. I've fit thousands of people in progressives, and the nonadapt rate is low single digits, 1% or less if you really know what you're doing.

As far as large frames, there are only really 3-4 molds the lens surfaces are made out of (your prescription is ground into the back of the lens), and they're mostly made to fit in damn near anything. You'll get a little more blur on the outside lower edges (where you don't look anyway) and a smidge more reading room going with a larger frame, and that's about it. There are a very few designed to only fit in larger frames, but it's more than likely whoever's helping you won't know the difference. And your Costco/Lenscrafters/large chain is going to have 1 or 2 to choose from. Costco actually uses one lens for everyone last I knew, the Essilor Ovation. I think LC tries to do the same, but they can make exceptions if you push.

As for computer glasses, a number of makers have computer/reading glasses that are half of a progressive in that there's no distance portion of the lens, there's just a small transition between the top (computer) and bottom (reading, slightly stronger). Without getting too much into lens arcana, that there's a smaller shift in power in the lens makes for a smoother transitions and less squishy spots in your vision. Think of pushing a bubble in wallpaper--the higher it rises off the wall, the smaller spot of the wall it's covering and vice versa. Now think of a lens doing the same thing. A +0.75 change in power as opposed to a +2.00, purely from an arithmetical standpoint, is going to be a mellower shift.

Well, my progressives were

Well, my progressives were high priced and had large lenses. And I used them for about two months. But they just didn't work for me. The distance problems were tolerable, but the main reason I got them was so I could read while watching TV, and for reading they were worthless. My optometrist says this is common. Most people like progressives, but a fair number just can't adjust. So I'll try bifocals now. Actually, I only wear glasses rarely, and don't use them at all for the computer. I can still read the screen fine without glasses. I'm sure that won't last forever, though. I was intrigued at one time with the idea of different lenses for each eye, but I never tried it. I suppose I could just pop the lens out of one side of an old pair of glasses and try that, since I don't actually need any correction for reading. Maybe I'll do that someday.

whew

For a minute I thought you meant you'd gone over to the Other Side.

I love mine, but if you can't adjust you can't adjust. I do have to say, or echo what's been said, that my first pair were from a poor optician and I liked them less than what I have now.

Not all progressives are equal

-- as Paul Camp says.

The first progressives I got were awful, especially the fact that at normal reading distance a textbook-width line of type was fuzzy at each end and that I never could get a comfortable distance from a computer screen. I got fixed-prescription computer glasses which fixed the latter problem, and simply took my glasses off to read (I'm nearsighted). Two years and I never really got used to the progressives.

When I replaced those glasses, I discussed my issues with my optometrist, and wound up with progressives that, 99% of the time, simply work. My computer glasses are unused, and I no longer doff my glasses to read anything wider than a newspaper column.

My lenses, BTW, are just this side of fashionably small (my OD measured very carefully to put the transition at just the right point before having them cut). Unlike Paul I don't recall the brand name of the lenses. They were about $30 more expensive than the first set, and are infinitely worth it.