How much is the most you've spent on glasses?

[HereComesEverybody]

I'm due an eye test next week & reckon I'll get some new frames.

I've seen some gorgeous ones which I'll think I'll get but I'll also try on a load of others before deciding.

It's going to cost £500+ with the lens

This seems like a lot but I wear them a lot & they're so visible that I want them to be really nice.

How much have you spent & are there any makes you particularly like

The ones I'm interested in are by https://anneetvalentin.com

Please share any you've have

Around £800. Variofocal lenses about £500 and Moscot frames around £300. I love them and they’re my most favourite frames of all time, they’re exceptional quality.

Also have clip on shades for them which were about £50.00.

https://moscot.com/en-gb/products/frankie?variant=8187759067240

This is with the clip

moscot.com/en-gb/products/frankie-clip?_pos=2&_psq=Frankie+&_ss=e&_v=1.0&variant=40021678456894

DS does an activity with a child whose dad is an optician. He currentjy works for Specsavers and has worked for Asda Opticians and an independent. I asked him how Asda glasses are so cheap, because I'd never noticed any difference in build quality, lens quality, vision, longevity etc between my £80 Asda glasses (varifocal) and my £500 glasses of the same prescription from on independent. He told me he was asked this a lot and puts it down to bulk buying power, their own lens labs, and using the opticians as a loss leader to get people into store.

I have paid £300 in the past but now limit myself to the the £20 versions. I can still see 😎

@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads that's very interesting. But I could 100% see & feel a difference between both my prescription & frames from Specsavers & the independent opticians I now go to.

For me there's no comparison.

My lens were totally wrong from specsavers.

A couple of hundred but that's half price as I'm on a contact lens scheme.

£500
Very short sighted
Astigmatism
Varifocals
Lenses thinned

I just don't have cheap eyesight.

My glasses have magnetic clip on sunglasses that fit on my frames so they are 2 in 1 glasses and are brilliant.

Yes, same here.
They are ridiculously expensive!

1200. Varifocals, thinned. Not proud of this!

For those ordering online, how do you calculate your pupillary distance accurately? I have ordered online in the past and it’s never been quite right, so it’s put me off ordering online again.
My current pair cost £450 by the time the lenses were thinned out enough, and I need some prescription sunglasses and can’t spend that again.

It’ll be on your old order from the old frames?

Ha! I love Lindberg but definitely keeping away from their 'precious' range unless I win the Lottery.

I paid around £900 for my last glasses which are Lindberg (but my lenses were expensive as they're varifocal). I love Lindberg. And also Mykita. I don't buy any other glasses (or sunglasses) as I've been spoiled by those two brands.

It isn’t, it isn’t listed on a prescription and when I’ve not had any paperwork with it on from my local optician when I’ve collected glasses.

This. In the days when my prescription was -20 the only wearable frame/lenses combinations were over £500. That was 20 years ago. When I started to need reading glasses I opted for eye surgery purely because I couldn't find a wearable glasses / contact lenses solution at any price.

If you ask your previous optician, they should be able to give you a copy.
This shoud be treated as confidential health information. Which also means you’re entitled to have access to it!

I've had a couple of pairs of Lindberg (not gold or diamonds!) but I much prefer Reykjavik and Tom Davies frames.

The most I've paid is around £650. I need glasses for reading and computer use only, but I spend most of the day working from a laptop so my glasses get plenty of use.

I always use an independent optometrist/optician.

DH had specs from Specsavers a few years ago. The lenses weren't good quality..

Interesting
I think the quality varies store by store for such as SS and VE.
I felt sea sick in some glasses once (single vision) and VE told me I'd get used to them. Turned out the lenses the wrong way round 😂

If yours are reading glasses I highly recommend getting varfocals so that you can wear them all the time. I wear readers over contact lenses all the time now as I can't see to eat etc. Also it's fab for prescription sunglasses particularly.

If you want to try them first Goodlookers sell multi focus reading glasses ( I use these as I have to spend so much on contact lenses and glasses with my full prescription!)
www.goodlookers.co.uk/collections/multi-focus

Same experience here.

My prescription wasn’t quite right until I saw an independent optician.
And the lenses ….
The medium range at my independent optician is better than the best lenses at VE.
Yes I do have a tricky prescription. You won’t see the difference with light or normal correction. But for me, varifocal, astigmatism, and needing lenses thinning down (I’m -9.5 with astigmatism in top), the difference is huge.

£3 for 3 pairs....pound shop! But I only need them for reading.

Another one here spending over a grand. Most of that is the custom ground, ultra thin, varifocal lenses for myopia and severe astigmatism. I would not be safe driving with cheaper lenses, the distortion on my last pair of non-custom ground ones was so bad I couldn't see my wing mirrors properly without physically turning my head to put them in the middle of my field of vision.

Please if anyone could explain to me what is the difference with quality lenses?

I can't understand what could be different between essentially pieces of glass/plastic or whatever it is.

I recently moved opticians and had their fanciest lenses. He was impressed by my old brand of lenses - also from independent optician. That's why £800 but I reckon if I use them for so many hours a day for years then I may as well pay the premium for the best they have 🤷🏼‍♀️

Prescription varifocal with high astigmatism.

Honestly I don't really understand it myself @wwyd2021medicine. All I know is that there is a very stark difference between what I can see through Nikon Seemax lenses and what I can see through anything else. The fitting of my first set was a revelation.
The optician explained it to me as a difference in how they are ground. "Normal" lenses are ground using something like 4 points of reference where the bespoke ground ones like mine use hundreds of points, to make sure you can actually see properly through them across the whole lens, rather than just making sure you can see through the middle bit.

@wwyd2021medicine I don't exactly know, but with high quality, well measured varifocals, I have never had to adjust. They have been perfect from day one. I have friends who have gone the Specsavers route and they have said there have been return visits and their new glasses have taken some getting used to.

On one of our local industrial estates there is a family firm who fits lenses for many local opticians. They also sell direct to the public. They have a limited range of frames but you can take frames from anywhere and they will glaze them. Their prices for glazing are typically half of what the opticians charge. Well worth investigating whether you have anything similar.

I usually do the soecsavers 2for1 designer, but I’ve went spendy this time and treated myself to Chanel. Got them online from a Spanish optician and they were £270 inc my lenses as opposed to £450 from vision express.