High Index Lenses

ddirl

I am looking for new glasses and my prescription is -10.75 / -9.00, so I want to get 1.74 high index plastic lenses.

I am getting very different price quotes for the lenses: €130 in Specsavers, €270 in Vision Express and €450 in an independent optician in Dublin city centre (they would normally be €300 but they don't have my prescription in stock).

My question is whether there would be any difference in the quality of the lenses or if it makes sense to just for the cheapest?

Daisies

ddirl wrote: »

I am looking for new glasses and my prescription is -10.75 / -9.00, so I want to get 1.74 high index plastic lenses.

I am getting very different price quotes for the lenses: €130 in Specsavers, €270 in Vision Express and €450 in an independent optician in Dublin city centre (they would normally be €300 but they don't have my prescription in stock).

My question is whether there would be any difference in the quality of the lenses or if it makes sense to just for the cheapest?

With your type of prescription, I would consider glass lenses. They will be much thinner. In one area of your lens the prescription will be -19.75 which even with 1.74 plastic will be think. You can get glass up to 1.9 index.

About the other lenses, it would all depend what brand of lenses they are using.

blackeyedpeat

I assume you mean right eye -10.75 left eye -9.50 because if it is as you wrote it won't matter how much you pay for it as you'll only get in standard plastic
bi-concave or lenticular Either way not pretty.

-10.75 may be out of stock range for some suppliers and need to be hand made. Hence the price difference.

Ask the optician to get you lens thickness calculations for each option.

To summaries the higher the index the thinner the lens.
An aspheric lens design is thinner than a spherical lens. Both surfaces being aspheric is even better.
Ask about the coating quality. is it easy to clean does it have a warrantee against scratching.
I would agree to disagree with daisies i would go with a stock 1.67 aspheric with a superior coating into a neat plastic frame.( not a fan of glass lenses)
Unless you have money to burn and get a dual digitally surfaced biaspheric 1.74 0r 1.67 from Zeiss or Seiko.

ddirl

Thanks both for your comments.

I do indeed mean Left eye -9.00 Right eye -10.75. Apologies if my original post was confusing.

I have looked into glass lenses but think I will stick to plastic.

My optician gave me an indication of width for a set of plastic frames I like. The 1.74 lense would be 6.6 mm in width for my right eye and the 1.67 would be about a mm thicker. The width of the frame is 4 mm, so would hide a good bit. The difference in price between the 1.67 and 1.74 lense is €200. Any thoughts on whether this is worth it?

Read a little bit about bi-aspheric lenses too. Any idea what the costs would be? Don't have money to burn, but don't mind paying a bit extra if the different was noticeable, as I wear my glasses full time.

Thanks again

Moonbeam

very similar prescription to me.
I had -8 and -9 + prisms and got 1.74 high index online from a UK company vision2you.co.uk,my 1st pair of thinned down glasses. The weight difference was unreal.
I always get plastic frames to hide some of the thickness.
I got my current pairs from buynewspecs.ie and now I have kids I decided I needed 2 pairs so settled for 1.67 reactions and the other pair normal and I am very happy with them. They polished the sides so they are barely noticeable and they were very reasonable. They are definitely worth talking to and I try to support irish where I can.
I was in specsavers during the week having a look around and if you only get 1 pair of glasses their 1.74 lenses are very reasonable atm I think it was 100 euro extra if you are only getting 1 pair.