AIBU not to get lenses on glasses coated.

[Rowan10]

I’ve been walking around with a plaster holding one side of my glasses together (think Jack Duckworth) for 3 months after being a bit over enthusiastic about ripping my face mask off when leaving a shop and breaking one arm off. It’s a good look.

Money is very tight due to furlough so I’ve put off getting them replaced but the other arm is now loose, they keep falling off and driving me bonkers so I’m off to the opticians tomorrow.

I’ve always had to pay extra for thinner lenses because my eyesight is pretty bad and otherwise they look like bottle tops. And then I’ve always also just paid extra without questioning it for the recommended coatings (anti scratch / glare etc). Probably around £50 coating / £80 thinner lenses each. So on two pairs of glasses (at should have gone to....) that’s over £250 extra. No way I can afford both at the moment so it’s one or the other.
If I can I’d like to get the buy one get one free frames because I’m always breaking / losing them and a spare pair is invaluable to a disorganised idiot like me.

Never had glasses without the coating before so don’t know how much difference not having it makes. Being vain I would prefer to still pay for the thinner lenses and not look like Mr Magoo. But not sure if this is a good idea or not. Does everyone get the coating ? How much difference does it make to looking at screens / night driving etc ? I’ve never really had to think about it before !!!

Would really appreciate some advice. I have to wear them all the time if that helps.

AIBU - get the coating
YANBU - coating makes no difference

Another vote for Asda here. My last pair cost £45 compared to £200 I was paying at Specsavers. Always have my eyes tested at Specsavers but won't buy glasses there any more.

The anti reflection with scratch resistance built in comes as standard on thinner lenses as it does make a difference to them, higher index (thinner) lenses for high prescriptions really need them. . I believe a 1.6 index lens at specsavers is £60. They have but one get one free as well so worth asking about things when you go in.

I've never paid extra for coating. It seems like a profitable extra like the sort of thing they try to sell you with cars or sofas.
I buy from glasses direct and because they are cheap I just buy lots of different specs.
Money saving expert website often have codes where you can get 2 pairs for £20.

Mistrals - that’s really interesting. I didn’t know you could choose a different option to the 2-4-1 at SS. I’ll ask tomorrow (and also for a copy of the prescription). Unfortunately the arm has totally sheared off my current pair and I suspect my prescription has changed in 4 years. So although I need them pretty urgently I can still spend a few days deciding where to get them from.

I’m on the borderline of needing varifocals (nearly 50) but have put that off due to the cost ! I’ll see what they say tomorrow....They are nice there but I have always thought they push certain things to make extra money.

Huge thanks to you all for the input about the coating being necessary. As I say it’s not something I’ve ever thought about before so really good to hear your experiences.

Asda are really impressive, I'd highly recommend them.

Is Asda cheaper for kids glasses too. My dd has a really high prescription and even with the nhs discount her glasses were over £100 from specsavers (for thinning etc).

I'm as blind as a bat, the thinner lenses at Specsavers come with the coating as standard I believe....not sure that they're the cheapest (probably given supply and demand) so you might want to just shop about.

Mara2021, yes I’ve heard the same about Boots. I’m only around -5 but also have astigmatism which has made me hesitant about online.
But really interesting to hear you can order a few pairs to try on.

You lot are brilliant! I’m currently looking as Asda frames online.

Definitely get the coating. 'Glasses' are not made from glass. Without the coating the lenses can scratch just from being cleaned.

When my glasses broke before I could afford to replace them, the opticians rummaged around in their box of bits and found me a pair of arms that fitted. They replaced both the broken arm and the sound arm without charge. They weren't the same as the original arms, but they went well enough. In any case I can't see the arms of the glasses I'm wearing, so I didn't care.

Solicitoring - yes that’s the other problem tomorrow. My 18 yr old daughter has lost hers so needs new ones. She’s still at school (haha as much as any of them are) so gets the discount but with a complex prescription too, and understandably fashion conscious so usually wants the pricier frames, it’s at least £100 more on top.

I can see only one of us getting glasses tomorrow...

Don't buy online unless you can afford for them to be wrong. Definitely buy coating and thinner lenses.

Does the coating help the wearers vision or is it only those looking at the wearer?

I got the coating as I struggled with the glare when driving in the dark. It made no difference at all. I wasn't aware it protected the lenses from scratches though so feel better after reading this and don't grudge it so much now.

I've had el cheapo glasses for ages. I use them for driving and watching TV mostly, I don't wear them "full time", and I don't find the lack of coatings any problem.

(My previous pair had all the fancy stuff, and I lost them a few weeks after buying. Could only afford cheap ones to replace.)

I ended up scratching one of my lenses and polished off the coating to remove the scratch. I can really see the difference on the one side that still has the anti reflection stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s still the case but worth checking, when I last got glasses from Specsavers there was an offer to take upgraded lenses instead of a free second pair.

They then gave me a ‘golden ticket’ that gave 40% off another pair within 6 months (including off the upgraded lenses). It was cheaper to for a second pair using that offer than taking the buy one get one free as that involved paying full price for two lens upgrades.

It would also man you could spread the cost of a back up pair if you waited a few months to use the golden ticket.

My prescription hasn't changed for a few years and I've ended up with several pairs - both Specsavers and Asda.
My go-to, favourite, most comfortable ones are my £45 varifocals from Asda. I absolutely love them.

@febbfad

Does the coating help the wearers vision or is it only those looking at the wearer?

The anti reflection coating does improve the clarity of your vision as it increases light transmission through the lens. For the same reason it helps with night driving. The anti scratch coating does not make the (plastic which they virtually always are) lenses scratch proof you still have to be careful as they will scratch if you are careless (I'm an Optometrist).

I really envy people with moderate prescriptions. I'm -14 in both eyes and cheapy frames or not getting the lenses thinned just isn't an option for me - unthinned lenses at my prescription won't even fit into most frames even if I didn't care how they looked.

Can only repeat what other high myopes have said — if you need strong lenses, don't buy online. The stronger the lens, the more important it is that the lenses are placed correctly in the frames, with the optical centres directly in front of where your pupils will be when the frames are comfortable on your face, and adjusted for how far away they are from your pupils compared with how far away the test glasses were (back vertex distance). When you have a high prescription, you'll be measured for your glasses by a dispensing optician, not just a sales assistant, to make sure it's right. If the lenses are in even slightly the wrong place, everything will be distorted. And there's fitting them once they've been made, too — I had a pair of glasses that, when they came in, just weren't right, and I couldn't explain exactly what it was. Everything just felt wrong even though I could see perfectly clearly. But the guy was very experienced with fitting glasses, listened to my confused burblings, fiddled with them, muttering "pantoscopic tilt", and when he handed them back they were perfect.

Agree that hi-index materials absolutely need the AR coating, because of their optical properties. Also, if you're anything over about –6 or –7 you'll definitely notice the difference between ordinary CR-39 and a hi-index lens. I'm around a –11 with a couple of dioptres of astigmatism on top, and I can tell the difference between glasses I have with lenses with a refractive index of 1.67 vs. ones with an index of 1.74. I lust after glass 1.9 lenses but a) cost and b) opticians keep advising me against them because of the weight.

Asda are good if you need cheap high index lenses, though they'll only go as high-index as they think you need, not what you'd like, and I don't rate the quality of the finish at the labs they use — the bevelling can be a bit shoddy. Specsavers are okay but I have a grudge against them I sometimes go to an independent glasses lab in my local town who do beautiful work and can be very reasonably priced, too, though they're pushy salesmen, which I don't like.