Progressive lenses aren't all equal!

Sometime after 40, we all start to notice changes with our vision focussing for close work.  Reading up close isn’t as easy, phone fonts start to be enlarged and the dim light of an atmospheric restaurant is not so appealing when you can’t read the menu.

As your optometrist, we then make adjustments to your glasses prescription to include an extra part called the “near add”.  The near add part of the glasses is great for reading but then makes the view across the room blurry – remember those people who look over the top of their glasses at you?

We are fortunate to have many choices of lens designs for our glasses providing both near and further away vision clarity.  When we talk about lens options with people, some still look horrified that we are suggesting the bifocal lens with a line that they remember “old” people wearing!  With much relief they start to understand that modern technology lets us have a lens with a progressive power change shifting down the lens.  Hence the name of these as “progressives”, technically referred to as PALs – progressive addition lenses.
Often people variably call these multifocals, transitionals or invisible bifocals – as long as we’re all talking about the same idea, we run with you!

The technology for progressives has continued to improve since the first versions 30+ years ago.  The gains have been made by computer design of the lens optics to be surfaced by the lab, customising the lens for not only the lens power but also compensating for what the other eye’s lens is power is, and then the lens angle and position in the chosen frame.  It’s getting very high tech, and with this comes the tech on our side.  Once a frame is selected our optical dispensers will take the accurate measurement to 1/10th of a millimetre using imaging via an ipad to obtain the specifications we need for the lens design and manufacture.

This technology isn’t cheap, and while most people understand the “you get what you pay for”, we are often told that “I can get progressives much cheaper with my free eye exam”.  Yes, there are cheaper options, but they are not the same.  Value is a mix of the dollars spent and the quality of the product – just because something is cheap, it’s not necessarily good value.

Over the past few months, we’ve had several people tell us that they now realise that there is a big difference to the vision they have with their customised progressives, compared to other cheap glasses from elsewhere.  It’s great to hear unprompted comments like this, we recommend what our optometrists choose to wear – why would we want less for our clients!