@thatdawnperson @photopuck Nominal "women's" glasses often fit me better than "men's" because I have a narrow head combined with a large-ish Northern European's nose. "Women" and "men" are subjective rather than objective qualities, and should be a search parameter that behaves the same way as color and shape.

I became obsessive about glasses as my eyes got bad enough to limit the types of frames I could wear. I have very strong opinions about eyeglass frames, let me show you them... 👓

@ardgedee That's optical4less.com of course (opitcal?)

@photopuck fwiw, if you have some favorite old frames that're still in good shape, you can get better bang-for-buck by re-lensing them.

Not necessarily cheaper, but it allows you better-
quality glass for about the price of frames + generic glass elsewhere. This also opens up the options for lens coatings.

I'm thinking of doing this to get photograde lenses, since cheap PG is worse than useless and good PG is 💸💸💸

This site is interesting... there are others, too...
http://www.replacementlensexpress.com/

@photopuck All my glasses (incl. reading glasses) have to have progressive lenses, so they cost 5-10x base price at the online stores. My scrip will run over $200 w/coatings at optical4less (I've used them before, they do good work).

At RLE, same scrip and name-brand lenses w/coatings will be $170-ish.

Some Pakistani and Chinese stores will run my scrip in the $80-150 range. Frames are mostly very poor quality. End-of-year BOGO sales tho: I might get some backups and try not to be seen in them

@ardgedee I tried a pakistani source before using O4L and the angle of the cylinder grind was wrong, even the replacements they sent on warranty. So I'm wary in general of anyone who is charging even less than O4L.

I'll look into RLE, but most of my frames are pretty crap.

I'm still stubbornly insisting on single vision. We'll see how long that lasts though.

@photopuck I have no choice w/r/t progressive lenses. Post-cataract surgery, eyeglasses are the only way to control focal depth.

Will get some single-vision lenses for workbench, the only time I'm working exclusively in closeup. Aside from that, even my reading glasses have to be bifocal/progressive from now until forever.

I depend on an optician in town for my primary glasses. Their prices are reasonable for flawless work. But I need a *lot* of glasses and have to save money where I can.

@photopuck Which disappointing eyeglass company did you use? I'm curious...

I've had good luck with the optics (but not the frames) at one of the Pakistani eyeglass sites, but that was over half a dozen years ago; they're still around but their prices and options have changed a lot, wouldn't be surprised if there's a qualitative shift too.

@ardgedee It was Goggles4U, and my order was in 2010, so possibly not indicative of anything any longer.

@photopuck Huh. G4U was the one I had good luck with.

Had to order mineral glass to get my scrip filled by them, maybe that meant a different shop did the grinding.

The frames were amazing, though. High copper or brass content in the metal so they turned green and bloomed everywhere the (very thin) plating wore off, threading for screw holes were smoothed in no time flat; fortunately to the same diameter as paperclip wire.

@ardgedee Cataracts, huh? annoying. Family disposition or just a bad roll of the dice? I've got -7 and -9 but everything's clear so far.

@photopuck Some family members developed myopia, cataracts, etc. but only to typical extents and at typical ages. I lost some dice rolls. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@photopuck I endorse spending on two pairs of good-looking good-quality frames and getting them re-lensed forever. More money up-front but it's money you never have to spend again.

What constitutes "good-looking" is personal. What constitutes "good-quality" requires more than can fit in the margins of this toot.