Another (relatively) cheap option; if there’s a Warby-Parker store near you, you can get eyeglasses with progressive lenses for $295. And a qualified person will do the measuring and fitting.
Check out the “Mutifunctional lens” on this Costco website page. It has a very large and wide functional area for computer use, with smaller close (keyboard) and smaller distance, so like progressives but adapted for computer/viewing.
Plus of course they also do traditional progressives, anti-reflective, etc.
I alternate between the same 2 identical frames when I get a new prescription, and get the lenses made at Walmart or Costco for much less money than at most other optical stores, even without insurance. (I have a complicated enough correction that online places aren’t a good option.)
Thanks everyone for all the advice. So, I took the general advice of seeing an optometrist to look over my glasses and discuss things. They charged me $25 to measure my pupillary distance, which seems to have been worth it as it was a bit non symmetric. (30/32.5) It is possible that this might correct for the trapezoidalization of the world I am seeing.
The end result is I think that I am going to go with a pair of distance-only glasses and a pair of reading glasses. Progressives seem to allocate far too little real estate of the lens to distance and far to much to reading for my taste. Perhaps in a year I will pick up the vision insurance and get an expensive pair of progressives from the in-person, way-too-fucking-expensive shop ($160 for the “less expensive” frames? What the hell is wrong with them?) that have a much wider corridor, but for now, it doesn’t seem like a great option.
Sounds like you are unfortunately right.
Thanks. This was originally my big concern, but with single-prescription glasses I think I will keep the shorter height of lens. When I try progressives again I will go to taller one.
It looks like Prism is something for double vision. Thankfully I do not have that issue even when looking through any range of the progressives.
Side Sphere Cylinder Axis Add Pupillary Distance
OD -0.25 -0.75 115 +1.50 30
OS PL -1.50 090 +1.50 32.5
Thanks! This is just the kind of general advice I was also looking for.
What pupillary distance was used for the Zenni prescription? And how did you measure for the temple arm length? Sorry, but the idea of going online for your very first pair of eyeglasses (progressives, even!) amazes me.
You seem to be right. I looks like I am going to have to shell out quite a bit of cash when I go to progressives. Ugh. I’m cheap and that is annoying. At least it is for a high-tolerance high-grade material in the lens. Paying stupid amounts for the frames themselves irks the hell out of me.
Yeah, the monitor distance is one of the big reasons I am just going to get single prescription glasses as it seems that my monitor counts as “distance”. I am also really going to enjoy looking through the bottom of the lenses at stairs not being suicidal.
God, I really want to avoid this. Also, I’m not noticing much of a need for the intermediate section. I tend to be looking through either the top or bottom of the glasses all the time. That might just be due to my inexperience with glasses. Plus, their definition of “distance” seems really short to me.
You win. I’m doing that. For PD I used a mirror to measure it. I came out very close and the glasses seems generally decent that way according to the optometrist, but I wasn’t able to account for the different right and left measurements. I tested it and sliding my glasses off to one side does seem to slightly improve vision, so the asymmetry seems to be correct.
Bingo.
If you have frames you like (read: bought cheap somewhere else) you can have the shop put their lenses in them. At least every place I’ve gone would do that.
Yes. For some reason, I’ve rarely found an optician/optometrist who carries my frames. And when one does, they mark them up outrageously (multiples of what I can get them for directly). So I buy them myself, take them to the shop.
None terribly close, but might be worth a drive when I go for them a year from now. How is their corridor? That seems to be the only really useful difference between the cheaper and more expensive options from what I am seeing.
Thanks. It looks like I am going to stick with single-distance glasses from Zenni, but in a year from now I will go to progressives (likely) and probably get them from a more expensive shop. Does Costco also have the issue with a narrow corridor?
I used 64 for the PD on the glasses I got from Zenni. The optometrist said it was closer to 66, but I am a little questioning of that measurement. For the frame width, i said, “I have a big head, what is the largest they have?” The biggest ones I saw were the low end of medium (136 mm), so I had to get those. The temple arm length was whatever came with that (145 mm). The optometrist said that both those measurements worked well for me. So, that was lucky.
Oooooooh, that is a good idea. Right now I am using frameless, so not sure that would work, but I could try doing that.
My previous post may not have been clear, but this is what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years. I have 2 identical frames and alternate between them each time. And I use Costco or Walmart to fill the prescription, as they’re far cheaper than other opticians.
I sure thought so. Their touted digital progressives may be better than the cheapest of the cheap options, but I sure didn’t like them. My two current pairs have the Shamir Autograph Intelligence lenses and I think these are the best I’ve ever owned. Probably no surprise, but there are lens geek sites where people discuss the pluses and minuses or all of the lens brands out there. Depending on how little you value your time, you might want to take a peek at those forums.
I’m similar. Most of the time, I don’t wear glasses. However…
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Driving in strange places at night, when I need to be able to read signs quickly, I use single-vision. If it’s during the day, I have single visions that are sunglasses. Until recently we owned a campervan, so stopping 11,000 lbs of machine made me nervy-ous, requiring more time to stop etc.
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Working on computer or close by, I have prescription readers. However, cheap “cheaters” work pretty well too.
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If I’m in a situation requiring a mix of uses, I’ll wear my bifocals. I did get progressives as well but I didn’t like the barrel distortion at the edges, which reminds me of ultrawide lenses that bow the lines, making | | look like ( ). As I looked around, that actually made me woozy. I tried them again recently and found them not as bad, but I stick with the bifocals.
Oh, and one recommendation: Costco.
Interesting. I will check out the lay of the land on progressives next year.
Oh, interesting benefit I have discovered with the shorter (30mm) height of lenses I have now. When I switch to single distance prescription, if I keep this height I will still be able to look out under the bottom of the lenses as a sort of el cheapo bifocal. It doesn’t have the astigmatism correction, but it is a lot better than looking through the distance portion of my glasses. If you look at my prescription, the Add is opposite sign to the Sphere and Cylinder, which I think means that my distance glasses will be worse than nothing for reading.
I was actually saying something else: whether of not you need prism isn’t the point. Lenses tend to create prism, and – with differing prescriptions in each eye – can create different total prisms between the two lenses.
Which is not good if you don’t need it, and can be easily avoided by a savvy optician.
So, you’re actually a bit nearsighted in your right eye but neither near- nor farsighted in your left.
You have some astigmatism in both eyes – more in the left.
Which is still a bit of anisometropia.
Yeah. Good quality lenses and a decent optician to put this together would be my take, even if you only go with “single vision lenses” for use with your monitor. You don’t need to spend a fortune on these.
The progressives … you may, unfortunately, have to spend a few bucks. Hopefully, you’ll have vision insurance by then.
I’ve worn eyeglasses for years but am unfamiliar with the term “corridor”. What does it refer to?
Perhaps I am misunderstanding. If prism corrects double vision, including that which may accidentally be introduced by the prescription, then if it was accidentally created, wouldn’t that show up as double vision?
How narrow or wide the tunnel without distortion is in progressives. My understanding is this affects the midfield the first and the thing that really good, expensive glasses can do is widen this with… pixie dust or something.
Follow me briefly down the rabbit hole 
Most of us have the ability to accommodate a certain amount of unnecessary prism before we would actually see double. It’s called fusion (the eyes and brain working together to fuse the images from two eyes into one and create depth perception) and we’re talking about fusional amplitudes.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s no effect of prism on how you’re seeing or how your eyes are working together just because you aren’t seeing double.
Think about blood-pressure medication. If you need it, and it’s the right med at the right dose, then it brings your BP down appropriately. If you don’t need it, but you take it anyway,
- nothing might happen
- you might feel a bit tired and woozy
- you might actually pass out when you stand up
Depending on how ‘robust’ your cardiovascular system is.
Similar with eyes – in this case, prism. It’s a bigger issue in ‘stronger’ prescriptions than yours, but it can be an issue in anisometropia.
Can be.
But there’s no point giving you BP meds (or insulin) that you don’t need, and there’s similarly no point in inducing prism in you that isn’t indicated.
Gotcha. So would that be something that is known just based on what the prescription is, or might that change with the lens material or something?
When you get the reading glasses, do you actually mean you will use those for your computer glasses?-if so, be sure to point that out to the optician you get fitted by when you order your glasses in person. Saying ‘readers’ gets you clear vision at distance you would hold a book, not, I think, the computer monitor distance it seems you are talking about in your real life use. That computer distance you speak of also might be helpful with the dashboard/speedometer needs when you drive. I’m just passing along stuff I learned the hard and/or expensive way, so you don’t have to.
Costco may have something to offer you here. The multi-functional lens of their has a huge computer mid-distance ‘sweet spot or corridor’. I quoted my earlier offering of this below here. I had misdirected it to myself so you might have missed it.
Costco would cost you $60 for an annual membership, which you save back right away and then some, plus you get the expensive stuff like personalized in-person advice and fitting, just like your expensive optical shop at your optometrist’s. Same qualifications of the person fitting your glasses: optician.
Re: prisms, you may need those even if you don’t think you have what we laypeople think of as double vision. We laypeople can develop ‘convergence insufficiency’ which is what prisms correct for. The misnomer of ‘double vision’
can throw us off. The ‘double vision’ can be very subtle, not what we lay folks think of as double vision. If you need prisms, they can be amazing in sharpening your eyesight.
Lastly, consider choosing a slightly taller frame/lens height when you get these new glasses. I suggest this because that way you will be doing the ‘getting used to’ work and adjustment for your vision, face, fashion image now, so you will have less adjustment/getting used to/effort to make when you do get progressives in a year. That lets you only have to get used to just the progressive lens vision adjustment, nothing else. I did not find that hard, a day at most. With the right sized (height and depth) lenses and frame, there won’t be any jarring “suicidal” going down stairs or stepping off curbs.
PM me if any of this didn’t make sense. I’m tech-daft and sitting in a house with rolling power outages and frozen pipes, etc and the stress may have affected how well I communicated. I’m off to turn on my oven to heat my kitchen. Dead furnace.