New Chart reading classes

Personal choice, but for me it's worth spending a bit more than £2.69 on glasses. Eyesight is quite important. A proper eyetest with an optician in a supermarket only costs about a tenner, and from the proper prescription glasses can be bought for about £20.
 
AngusMcDoon said:
Personal choice, but for me it's worth spending a bit more than £2.69 on glasses. Eyesight is quite important. A proper eyetest with an optician in a supermarket only costs about a tenner, and from the proper prescription glasses can be bought for about £20.
Click to expand...

It depends on your situation. I have very strange eyes, and have correction for distance using contact lenses (glasses aren't possible for my situation). Both eyes are properly corrected for distance vision; the reading correction is therefore the same in both eyes. Under that situation, £20 is far too much to pay for reading glasses, and cheap "off the peg" ones are perfectly adequate, and allow me to use different strengths for different purposes. I have checked this with the opticians who prescribe my contact lenses and they fully agree this is a good way to proceed. For example, I am wearing slightly weaker lenses to type at a screen than I would to read, and if doing very close work (I do fancy rope-work sometimes) I use a stronger set. I can also afford to scatter sets of glasses anywhere that I might need them - for example, there's a set permanently at the chart table on Capricious.

I am very conscious of taking care of my eyes - I have had a long history of all sorts of congenital problems with mine, and came close to permanent damage to the vision in one eye. But in my case - and I appreciate this isn't so for everyone - cheap reading glasses are part of the solution, and are used with the blessing of the professionals who care for my sight.

I would agree that using glasses WITHOUT taking advice from professionals is foolhardy in the extreme!
 
AngusMcDoon said:
Personal choice, but for me it's worth spending a bit more than £2.69 on glasses. Eyesight is quite important. A proper eyetest with an optician in a supermarket only costs about a tenner, and from the proper prescription glasses can be bought for about £20.
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Angus, I have not one but two pairs of proper glasses (I have got to the age where I've given in to varifocals), but for under three pounds having something on the chart table is worth having.
 
I have my eyes tested annually, I'm due next week in fact, but readyspecs are still Ok for me. This is confirmed by my optician. If both your eyes require the same magnification and you only require them for reading, you're fine with off the peg. My optician is looking forward to the day when my eyes differ but I'm hoping to disappoint him again next week. Tescos often have them at around 3 quid and they seem to last pretty well until I sit on them or drop them overboard. Reading glasses are readily available from tinternet (and probably other types as well).
 
AngusMcDoon said:
Personal choice, but for me it's worth spending a bit more than £2.69 on glasses. Eyesight is quite important. A proper eyetest with an optician in a supermarket only costs about a tenner, and from the proper prescription glasses can be bought for about £20.
Click to expand...

As a general principle, I'd agree with you. I've had a few pairs of cheap glasses that were dreadful and some decent ones from Foster Grant at a bit over a tenner, but the Aldi ones I've had have all been up there with the FG ones. The last pair were my favourites until they got run over (don't ask! :o) and the couple of pairs I got on Sunday seem just as good.

If anyone hasn't got theirs yet, don't hang around - the nice styles and sensible strengths go fast!
 
+1 for proper eye tests at an opticians.

For the small fee your eyes will examined and tested for several potentially serious conditions (sadly I now know that I have cataracts developing)

Prescription specs will properly correct your eyesight for defects such as astigmatism.
 
For us oldies, who cannot read the newspaper at arms length in bright sunshine, using cheap glasses for reading is fine - after all they are just magnifying glasses. I wear bifocals and lost them overboard last summer while doing a coastal passage singlehanded. Fortunately I have a couple of cheapies on board and I see distant objects fairly well.
 
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AngusMcDoon said:
A proper eyetest with an optician in a supermarket only costs about a tenner, and from the proper prescription glasses can be bought for about £20.
Click to expand...

I get free eye tests, but yesterday I paid my optician about £120 for the lenses in a pair of £35 glasses. Can't complain though, I also had a series of tests for MD which only cost £25.
 
I uses contact lenses but when they are in need reading glasses. Specsavers sent me to get a pair of £1 reading glasses. I have a pair at work, one on the boat and one at home. Means not having to remember to carry them around.
 
PhillM said:
I uses contact lenses but when they are in need reading glasses. Specsavers sent me to get a pair of £1 reading glasses. I have a pair at work, one on the boat and one at home. Means not having to remember to carry them around.
Click to expand...
One pair on the boat is not enough - you need at least 3 to replace the pairs that you drop over board.
 
I see no reason to pay squillions just to be able to read my charts or newspaper. There is absolutely no possibility of the "wrong" glasses doing any harm to my eyes, which anyway have an uncorrectable problem, so I just buy several glasses with different strengths for divers purposes.

Not having an eye test is a different matter and checks for glaucoma and other conditions are definitely worthwhile, but the way it works is that there is pressure on the customer to buy expensive glasses for what is basically a simple task. I don't have significant astigmatism so a simple correction will do for me.
 
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