Six months ago I went from having a mild astigmatism of nearly 10 years to being plainly nearsighted. A whole world of contact lens possibilities cropped up as a result. I’m happy with my B&L Purevision lenses (monthly disposables) after I’ve tried several other brands, but out of curiosity I decided to look at daily disposables. Ack! Even figuring in the cost of lens solution, at $75-100/year, it’s still not worth it.
Until I ran across Daysoft lenses. For $16/month, under $200/year, you can have daily disposable lenses. Which is only $80 more than a year of Purevisions, and likely cheaper without the need for lens solution. You simply choose which brand you currently use and they select for you one of their two lenses, just with varying water content.
However, Daysoft aren’t sold by the major contact lens websites (1800 contacts, vision direct, etc). They seem to be perfectly reputable, but they’re literally 30% cheaper than their nearest competitor, which seem to be Focus Dailies. I can’t seem to grasp how they can be so much cheaper. They seem to be marketed to many English speaking countries, like the UK, the US, and Australia.
So, has anyone had any experience with these lenses? Any red flags I’m missing?
I’ve been working in the optical field in the US for 22 years. I’ve never heard of these lenses. If you order them, please have your eye doctor check the fit of the lenses once you receive them. If the base curve is too “tight”, you could end up with a corneal edema. I did not see any mention of the base curve of the Daysoft lenses, so I don’t know if they’re “tight” or “flat”. I know that I can’t wear a flat base, as the lens slides all over my eye.
In the US, the brand of contact lens is actually part of the prescription. Anyone selling you contact lenses without validating the prescription is violating the law. It’s kind of like selling Lithium to someone who was prescribed Prozac. The laws in the US treat contact lenses very much like prescription drugs. Of course, I am not familiar with the regulations in other countries, so this may not apply to you at all.
If you go to this link, (you can get there from the main page by clicking the “order now” tab) there’s a scrolling box asking you to select your current lenses, and by that they pick either Daysoft 58 or Daysoft 72 for you, which is the % water content. And they are manufactured in the UK.
I would ask my eye doc to see if they’re okay. Hopefully that wouldn’t negate the savings in the first place…
They’re kind of expensive, but I won’t wear anything other than the hydraclear Oasys now. From 2008-2009 I got 10 chalazia, in alternating eyes, the last of which took a full year to clear up/drain because I didn’t have the surgery done (so it developed in 2/2009 and had only drained by 4/2010, during which time I didn’t wear contacts at all).
They ruled out eye cancer (they being the specialists I had to go see) and even though he says he’s skeptical of the causal relationship, I noticed that the beginning and end of the infections coincided with some supercheap contact lens deal from Walmart that my parents talked me into getting.
Yeah, before you go the route of switching lens solutions, always check out http://www.staininggrid.com/. It’s pretty cool, and you learn that most lenses will suffer using housebrand solutions.