I need new reading glasses, but work isn’t just about looking at stuff close up.

Are they any good? I.e. better than looking over your glasses?

Yup (he says looking down through the vario part of his lenses) 8)

I’ve worn them for several years. I need to read (close up) use computer (middle distance) admire the scenery (long distance). All excellent, no problems.

Yes, have a search on my history, probs half a dozen varifocal threads in the last year. I am currently wearing Oakley wingbacks with ultrathin vari lenses, prescription around -6.5 and astigmatism. I wear them on the bike all the time too now. Took a good 3 months to get sorted and used to them.

alas yes they are good but not on the bike because the glasses bounce and the lenses magnification is all over the place

I would prefer 20/20

Cheers all. I doubt I’d bother with them when riding.

OK to order online…or has anyone bought retro/old frames and had lenses custom ground?

Does Edinburgh have any artisanal opticians?

Varifocals are fine on a bike. If they fit well they don’t bounce. Be aware that not all varifocals are the same. The cheaper ones have a very narrow band of vision and I found them to be a problem and ended-up changing them for the more expensive ones that I should have got in the first place 🙄 .

Yep. Just got my first pair. Optician said I’d have problems but I didn’t. Graded transition is best I reckon.

I would prefer 20/20

20/20 is actually pretty poor vision. If you wear glasses I guarantee your overall vision is better than most people’s and way better than 20/20.

worn varis for the last 5 years, ok for general wear however .. you ll find you have to move your head a LOT more than you do now to see things clearly through the appropriate sweet spot in the lens, if you have a job where you d like to be able to see close up through the top part of the lens looking up then your stymied and importantly i can ride my bike and drive ok but if doing slow spped work on the bike or riding my trials bike they are a definate no no due to the many rapid changes of field of vision..

+1 to a lot of the above, I wear prescription safety glasses at work. Walking about is a bit like being in a goldfish bowl and alters depth perception until you’re used to them. Computer’s fine, but I find the sweet spot for reading has to be spot on, you need to move your head rather than your eyes when scanning the page

Yep but they are horribly pricey :(. Work well though

Forgot (well didn’t think about it actually) I don’t use my glasses for anything other than work or TV or playing on here or my MAC.
Don’t use them riding and never will. Don’t need them for driving neither, well not yet it seems.

I did try them driving once, found it a bit weird with the dials on the dash being really big and distracting but frontal vision fine it a bit too bright.

Sometimes I wear them out of the office at lunch, but the thing with this is I find steps/escalators a bit of a struggle, sometimes missing my footing which isn’t doing my street cred any favours, so I’ve stopped wearing them out.
I know all of this would be fixed if I persisted but to be honest, I can’t be arsed yet.

I’ve been using them for years now and would not have anything else. One or two people warned me of issues with them when I was first thinking of having them, but when I got them I took to them straight away. They are expensive, the ones I’m wearing now were £600, but you pay for what you get.

What about trying multifocal contact lenses? None of this jump between focal lengths, it’s just like normal eyes. And not affected by rain – ideal on the bike.

IMHO dont try orpering vari’s online, the position of lens in relation to your eye is a lot more critical than single vision lenses so best measured properly.

Yep just started to need them in the last 3 months.
I would suggest getting the very best lenses you can afford with the widest field of view – a good optician should be able to show you the difference.
It took a few weeks to get the hang of them but once you do they are really good.
IIRC I spent about £300 on lenses and frames

I’ve had a couple of pairs of varifocals for 2 or 3 years, now. Much better than the bifocals I had before. I’ve started wearing them on the bike, too, but that’s mainly because I can’t be arsed putting my contacts in. I managed to get around Innerleithen xc in them, last week, so I’m managing quite well with them.

you ll find you have to move your head a LOT more than you do now to see things clearly through the appropriate sweet spot in the lens,

This was my experience with my admittedly low end varifocals. A small sweet spot in the centre. Wearing them for driving I needed to turn my head to check my mirrors rather than moving my eyes. With 3 mirrors to check every few seconds the varifocals didn’t work for me.

I went back to bifocals – comfortable to wear all day. Like any glasses shite in the rain but I don’t need them for distance vision so I can take or leave them for cycling other than mapreading.

For good weather cycling bifocal sunglasses.

Mine were £130 from The Spectacles Room in Castleford.

I’d echo above comments about going for top lenses. Mine were pricey, but work much better with less head movement than the ones they replaced. I think they came in at around retail of £600 in Oakley Wingbacks from local family optician, however I got a healthy discount 🙂

cynic-al – Member
Cheers all. I doubt I’d bother with them when riding.

OK to order online…or has anyone bought retro/old frames and had lenses custom ground?
I wear Shamir multipoint varifocals in a pair of RayBan Lennon frames I picked up for $50 off eBay, with scratched lenses.
They’re brilliant lenses, mine also have a multilayer AR coating, and DriveWear photoreactive as well, which works in the car, which means I can both drive, and see my satnav when necessary; however, for reading the area available is right at the very bottom of the lens, which isn’t really very comfortable.
Having said that, my vision is such that I don’t need glasses for reading except when I wear contacts at weekends, your vision may well allow a larger area for close-up vision, but that’s up to the optometrist, and you’ll need to sit in front of a machine that analyses the best points for the multifocal to work.
I really, really wouldn’t go online for anything complicated like my lenses, I’d want to be able to go back and have any issues sorted face-to-face, should any arise.

I got some last year.
They didnt come home with me from the shop. I would move my eyes slightly to one side, and everything was out of focus. I was told to move my head. Just moving my nose tip an inch made them out of focus. Terrible things.
I was told around 20% of people cannot use them. – after I had paid for them. And that I would have been told that during my eye test. I wasnt.
They wouldnt refund, but would supply normal lenses at no extra cost.
I wasnt happy.
So , Scrivens Loughborough, this is another post about your awful customer service.

Make sure you know what they are charging beforehand, and if there is any charge if they do not work for you.

Thanks all. Given the price of varifocals I’m just going to get readers to start with.

Chuckling to myself in my new readers right now. £2 Primani.
Perched on the end of my nose to go between reading phone and watch telly…
Getting old together 🙂

I’d high 5 you but I’m scared I’d miss…

Hi 5s are for dem yout. Pass the Horlicks mo-fo!

Ps. My eyes are fine, it’s just that my arms aren’t long enough. Hence needing geps before you do, chronologic -al

Varifocals are fantastic for computer, driving, cycling, the lot. End of.

Another Q:

If you wear varifocals, does the acclimatisation mean you struggle without them or with just reading glasses?

I wear varifocals almost all the time. I normal wear a pair specified for computer use, which are fine for everything except driving – I have a pair with a wider ‘distance’ zone for that. The only time I have any problem is walking down stairs, which I haven’t acclimatised to, and just have to go carefully.

I wear contacts for skiing and watersports, and normally don’t notice the difference when I go back to varifocals, just occasionally the world is a bit distorted (still in focus) for the first half an hour.

Another Q:

If you wear varifocals, does the acclimatisation mean you struggle without them or with just reading glasses?

Not entirely sure what you’re asking, but acclimatising with my first pair, which were fairly cheap Specsavers ones, (bought because I needed to use satnav in the car, and I couldn’t see the road and the phone stuck to the screen at the same time), basically involved looking downwards and having things out of focus, but after a while I got used to moving my head, and after a week or so I didn’t think about it, so when I got my Shamir lenses in much deeper frames, and which were multipoint as well, wearing them was just like wearing contacts with sunglasses, except I need reading glasses with contacts, whereas when wearing my glasses I just take them off to read, being short sighted, although very small text requires the glasses, I can’t focus too close.
I would suggest getting some cheap Specsavers ones to start with, I had two pairs, clear and tinted, for around £140, and wore them for a couple of years.
I don’t think everyone copes with them, and it’s definitely a bit weird looking through them at first, but it’s certainly worth giving them a chance, mine are worn all the time through the winter, then I wear contacts at weekends during the summer; it’s not worth wearing contacts to work, I’d only have to use readers anyway.

Having recently hit the age where I need reading glasses as well as distance glasses I’ve gone for the multi focal in both glasses and contact lenses.

For the glasses I went for the most expensive option. (Price seemed to control how much of the lens you could actually see through). Generally they are excellent although you do get an odd sensation if you tilt your head while looking at something. A bit like a tilt shift movie.

For the contact lenses I went for the cheaper approach. Basically one lens it optimised for distance and one for close up. You’d think it wouldn’t work but it has been brilliant. A lot cheaper than multifocal and (from what the optician said) better.

I would suggest getting some cheap Specsavers ones to start with

Dont do this they are generally the cheapest and crapiest lens with most distortion and if you cant get on with them are more likely to turn you away from v/f’s in total, get the ones either advised or best you can afford, with most decent lenses they run a scheme where if you cant tolerate the v/f they will replace it with a single vision (distnce or near as your prefer/need) as part of the cost

If you wear varifocals, does the acclimatisation mean you struggle without them or with just reading glasses?

Its not a case of struggle, its just you realise what you cant see when not wearing them, which ‘irks’ some people.

I need varifocals as I have a different reading prescription for each eye, and a different astigmatism. If you do go with them, then get the premium type lenses rather than the cheaper versions, and get a frame that allows a deeper lense. The cheaper types have a very restricted field of view, and shallow lenses exacerbate that effect. The last pair I had were too shallow and the critical spot for reading was so restrictive I had to tilt my head a bit to read. The ones I have now are much better. The mid range for computer use is great, but I have to tilt them to watch TV in a recliner.

The first time I wore varifocals I woke up the next morning with vertigo and vomited several times, but by the end of day two that had all passed.

I wear them to ride if I want to follow the garmin, or keep them in my pack so I can read a map when I stop.

Specsavers have been great. They replaced the crap shallow ones free of charge a week after the guarantee had run out. Go to them if they have the 2 for one offer. I got a pair of titanium framed premium varifocals with anti glare and anti-scratch coatings, and a pair of designer framed polarised sunglasses for £375.00