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Is there any difference? Screen cleaner - marketed for cleaning monitors and TVs is cheap and sold in 250ml bottles (just bought a bottle for about £3 from amazon). Glasses cleaner seems to be sold in tiny 60ml bottles and ludicrously priced.
I, by mistake, bought some Zeiss “optics cleaner” and got two bottles 125 mil bottles for £7, 240mil of zeiss “spectacles” cleaning spray is £12
is this all he same stuff?
Dunno, I buy boxes of spectacle cleaning wipes from Wilco’s. 26 wipes for 50p, they do exactly what you want them to do. Opticlear wipes are good as well, Morrisons do those.
https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-spectacle-wipes-26pk/p/0307800
Alcohol based cleaners will ruin a polycarbonate lens, certain frame materials (optyl) or other cold glaze frames.
Otherwise you should be fine, but they may not be okay with the skin or eyes. They may be the same stuff, but they might not be tested for use on things that touch the face.
Those wipes are fantastic for use on the trails.
On the trails? Really? I mean I don’t like too much mud but that seems a little excessive...
Why not? They're easy to stuff in a pocket, come in a wrapper so don't get muddy/sweaty before use and clean a muddy lens quickly and easily. OK they're probably not a great choice for the environment (even assuming you're taking the litter home) but other than that they make perfect sense to take out on the trails.
Having successfully ruined the coating on some prescription glasses, and a smartphone screen, I just use water now.
Maybe there's some effective cleaners that don't contain alcohol.
I wanted something other than water as i find it doesn’t get grease off so they end up smeared.
The optics /lens cleaner makes no reference anywhere to spectacles but is supposed to be safe with coated, anti reflective, lenses. Their individual wipes are sold for use on both camera lenses and spectacles (pics of both on the packaging)
Looking at the cheapo Office Depot screen cleaner and the Zeiss both seem to have 1.2-benisothiazol-3 as an active ingredient so i think i’ve Answered my own question - all a version of the same stuff.
I bought some Okulan at the Cycle show, it has no alcohol and appears to work well although for all I know it could just be water
Best thing for cleaning glasses at home is washing up liquid and then water.
I buy those big ol boxes of 100 or so wipes from Amazon. Do cycling glasses, normal glasses and screens with em. Box lasts for ages.
eg.
As someone who relies on prescription glasses to function - I mostly just rinse my glasses under a running tap, squeeze some liquid soap onto my fingers then smear over the lens, then under running water rinse it off. That gets my glasses pretty much as clean as I want. Washing up liquid contains too much salt and can cause bad staining of acrylic frames.
I do have some of the wipes in sachets for out and about, and a bottle of lens cleaner for occasional use, but a regularly washed and changed lens cloth and lukewarm water and liquid soap work for me.