I’m digging into an idea around eyeglasses, screen-time, and vision discomfort. If you wear prescription glasses but still get headaches, eye strain, or blurry vision after long screen days, I’d love to chat briefly (20–30 min).
Pure research, zero selling.
Interested? Drop a comment below or email me directly at jbornhorst [at] gmail.com. I’ll coordinate a convenient time to talk.
Reading glasses work fine when the screen is very close to your face such as a laptop screen. However if it's a separate monitor that's ~30 inches away, reading glasses are slightly blurry which can lead to eyestrain and headaches.
https://www.warbyparker.com/learn/wp-content/uploads/2023/04...
Look into it if you suspect it's a contributor to headaches: https://www.google.com/search?q=computer+glasses+%22intermed...
Yes! You're the first to mention this.
It's not refractive index itself that's the problem, it's dispersion (roughly, the degree to which refractive index varies across the visual spectrum, described by ‘Abbe number’). We've all seen pictures of a prism splitting a beam of white light into a rainbow — for visual purposes, the less split the better.
Higher-index materials tend to have poorer dispersion, but especially in the mid-range 1.6ish, there are wide variations in quality at the same index. Glass tends to be best, if your prescription is light enough that you can handle the weight. Polycarbonate and acrylic are awful. MR-8 is in the middle, and what I've settled on for recent computer glasses.
Here's a good way to test your glass's refraction index. On your desktop find a small red icon with something white in the center. Stare directly at it. Now turn your head until the icon is at the edge of your vision. If your lenses are cheap polycarbonate, the white part of the icon will appear to move towards the edge of the icon or even out of it.
Most non-cheapo glasses today in the US use Trivex. It's a polymer, not glass, but its Abbe number is 43, which is perfectly adequate.
Crown glass, with its Abbe number of 59, is superior, but the eyeball can discern differences only up to 45-50, so most of Crown glass's improvement over Trivex is imperceptible.
This is partly why it's not offered in glasses (again, in the US, at least according to my optometrist). It is also twice as heavy, shatters (polymers like Trivex don't), and scratches more easily.
That’s why our cone response to the spectrum looks like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell#/media/File%3ACone... instead of having cleanly segregated red vs. green responses. If it was segregated, we could only focus on red or green but not both. By having a heavy overlap, we can get a sharp focus on yellow. And, the visual system makes the full spectrum work by deriving the red vs. green concepts from the difference between the two cone responses. Blue focus is accepted as a necessary sacrifice.
Now I always go for the thickest lenses (which are also usually the cheapest) for this reason. My prescription is -3.75, and there isn't any noticeable difference with thinner lenses.
That almost seems to reduce eyestrain as well, at least for me, as they're still good enough to see everything (I can't read text across the room but I can halfway across the room), just not without some light blur on things, and I seem to have trained my brain to stop trying to focus on things, just let it stay in the blur (at least while I have my intermediate glasses on), and that seems to relax my eyes more.
But the intermediate glasses are super clear for when I'm on the computer, which is a good chunk of the day and where I really need to see nice and sharp, as I'm manipulating things with pixel precision at times (game ui, web ui, board game graphic design).
Thing is, I ignored it for about 10 years and my brain simply ignored whatever signal was coming from that eye. I'd look at things and see no blurring unless I closed my right eye. However, at a certain crossover distance my brain "switches over" because my left eye has amazing close vision and my right eye doesn't. I can actually feel it when this happens, like a physical sensation. No headaches, but it is "odd".
Anyway, I decided to get glasses, and it turns out I need two different prescriptions. One is close up (not longsightedness, it is still a myopia lens). The other is for 1m-∞
What kills me is going into the office where I am switching between glasses. Different rooms with different Zoom screens. At home is much nicer where I just have one big monitor to watch.
I take my glasses off to read my phone most of the time. Technically my primary glasses are progressives but it is nicer to take them off.
Same. I wear progressive lenses and I feel like they do fine as far as being able to read the text on my phone or for reading a book. But I tend to take off my glasses anyway to do these things. I'm not entirely sure why this is since I seem to be able to read the text fine with the glasses. My hypothesis is that I like being closer to the text so that it fills up more of my visual field which helps me mentally focus on the text better.
Currently wearing, to look at arms-length monitor screen, add +1.0. Will move out to the porch to read and switch to add +1.5. Will come back to cook and switch to my basic prescription.
I must put on and take off 300 pairs of glasses a day. But I don't care. I can't do anything else.
I'm nearsighted and don't need glasses to see my computer screen clearly at all. But nevertheless I started getting headaches from eye strain.
Went to the optometrist, got a pair of glasses just to reduce eye strain at screen distance. Zero difference in sharpness, but I can work all day long with zero eye fatigue.
The intermediate distance lenses are great and my headaches have vastly reduced - because they were specific for VDU, my work paid for a portion of them.
It's not for avoiding outright headaches (I don't get vision headaches) but it's clearly more comfortable. It's quite possible that what's pleasant is in part the change of pace - but it is also better adapted for sharpness.
My wife is getting bifocals for basically this same reason.
12 inches?
that's way too close
Imagine them lying down or propped up on their elbows with the book on the floor. Then that distance seems about right.
Over the summer I added a pair of progressive occupational lenses (not reading glasses). They are focused arms length in front of me. This has been a complete game changer. I can now see my monitor crisply, clearly, and easily in a way that I haven't seen it in a decade.
When I swap back and forth between my regular lenses and my occupational lenses, the difference is stark. With my regular lenses there's a part of the screen that's about a half dollar coin in size that's clear and in focus. The rest of the screen is every so slightly blurry. I have to move my head to constantly adjust the focal point, or move my eyes and struggle to focus.
When I switch to my occupational lenses, the entire screen is clear. I don't have to move my head. I don't have to fight to focus. Where I look, it's crisp.
No wonder I was struggling! I was fighting to focus all day long. I suffer from almost no eye fatigue now. If my eyes are tired, it's usually because I'm tired and it's been a long day.
The downside is I now have to juggle two pairs of glasses instead of one, but that's oh so totally been worth it. I'm not going back.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraocular_lens
I was very surprised that this is not a more common thing to hear about amongst people with bad eyesight. Laser correction sucks in comparison, with more risks of complications, generally worse vision outcomes, longer recovery, etc. The lens implantation process is even undoable and as safe as cataract surgery which has been done since the 1970s.
I still dream of being able to see first thing when I wake up.
Using it outside of its intended distance will cause eye strain since your eyes won't be able to focus properly.
My provider calls them "computer glasses". It does not have blue light filtering as I do work with implementing web designs and color accuracy does matter to me.
I totally recommend computer glasses for anyone who works all day looking at a computer screen.
They would be a separate prescription / lens type (as in not progressive I think) compared to daily use glasses. I do have to swap to my daily use when not using my computer glasses outside of sitting and looking at a monitor.
Using my daily use for computer monitor reading doesn't feel "right" compared to my computer glasses. There is a clear difference between them.
Mine are more useful that I anticipated when I'm not using them for work. I would advise against anybody driving with the wrong pair of glasses, but I can see significantly better with my occupational lenses than without. I would not trust them at night, but during the day I can see well enough I am not concerned about my driving. I don't intend to drive with them, but there has been the occasion here or there when I had to run somewhere quickly and forgot to swap my glasses.
It also helps that mine are progressives, so the very very top part of the lens is my "regular" prescription. I can use that to focus on something at a distance if necessary.
>They would be a separate prescription / lens type (as in not progressive I think) compared to daily use glasses. I do have to swap to my daily use when not using my computer glasses outside of sitting and looking at a monitor.
Like I mentioned above, mine are both occupational and progressive. I'd like to try non-progressive occupational lenses to see if I like them better, but I'm not convinced it would be worth the money.
I don't find that at all, personally. I wear my computer glasses almost all the time in the house and just let myself not try to focus on things. If anything it seems to be better than my normal distance lenses for eye strain, for me, because my eyes do try to focus with my normal lenses since it's supposed to be perfectly clear, where I know there's a good reason they're not in focus when I'm not wearing them.
My distance glasses have progressive lenses, which may be part of that, as there's different strength depending on where you're looking at in the glasses. I've been tempted to remove progressive lenses from my next pair, as I tend to take them off to read anyway, and then I'd get a flat prescription like I have on my computer lenses.
I have two glasses that have lenses with a similar prescription. The older one has some basic lenses and anything outside the center gets gradually less clear towards the edges. The newer one has aspherical lenses and even the areas near the edges are quite clear. It wasn't expensive either. The best lens I have used was probably a zeiss one but I'm guessing the full featured zeiss is probably quite expensive.
https://www.presbyopiaphysician.com/issues/2024/march/the-un...
This can be mitigated with custom magnetic clip lenses, e.g. Chemistrie. Tiny magnets are implanted into your current frame. Clip lens changes the focal length of your existing glasses by a fixed offset. Computer or reading clip can be changed in seconds. They also have polarized clips for instant sunglasses on your existing frame, which are better than Transitions/photochromic because they work while driving and are instant on/off.
By asking to talk to only those who have problems, you could be self selecting for a population who may not help you actually solve your problem, even if they mean well.
This is just my experience of course. When I did my initial research, I asked a question on Blind about progressive lenses. Lots of people said they have progressive lenses and they have zero problems.
If I was forced to guess, I would say that some (or maybe even all) of these folks who start talking about the computer glasses……it makes me wonder if they simply under-bought their lenses. Yes glasses are expensive. Getting a better lens will cost more. Yes yes, the Luxotica this and that. I don’t care about any of that crap. All I care about is getting the best lens possible and so should you!
Do what I mean!
Maybe my astigmatism correction is causing problems, though it's a small correction. Do you have any astigmatism in your prescription?
What's great with this lenses for computer use is that anything from screen to close up is clear so they're great for hobby work, etc.
Not all, because I'm one of them and I think progressive lenses are dumb and won't buy them, but I will buy top of the line distance correction and get it checked to make sure it's correct and then get top of the line computer glasses and make sure that they're correct too. I will get transition lenses though. Those are pretty great (except in a car I guess).
I don't need glasses that sacrifice fov for distance and also for my computer when I can just keep the right glasses with my computer.
I don't sit at a screen much these days, but for a while when I did, I had a computer prescription pair that I swapped on every day when I sat down at my desk, and swapped off when I went to leave. The distance vision with it was good enough to walk around the office or down the road to lunch, but not good enough to drive to and from the office.
After moving and getting a new optometrist, I got a different main prescription, and was told to try wearing them at the computer instead of swapping. Lo and behold, they worked without causing headaches, which is why I ended up with a computer pair previously.
For all of the time I've been in glasses, I've read books without them.
I'm probably not interesting to talk to, because I'm no longer in front of a computer when I can avoid it and I'm in my 40's so I'm staring down (pun intended) some vision changes in the near future anyway.
Minus 2 or 3 in both eyes with a cylindrical correction as well.
I'm skeptical that that can work. I suppose you can administer a basic eye test and get a close-enough prescription, but this is really important and I want to get it exactly right.
I kinda wish I could give it a try, just to see what they can manage to do without all of the tools that an optometrist would apply. But I've got some concerns (which is why I made the appointment) and I'd rather have somebody look closely.
What you also need though is someone to look into your eye and machines still don't do everything an optometrist does there. (though there are other machines that do things your optometrist cannot)
Furthermore an assessment by an optometrist should also check for glaucoma and macular issues.
Anyway, I've been fighting progressives for about 5 years now. I have 2 pairs that I got a couple years apart but could never bring myself to wear them. Like some others have said, I much prefer having a pair of medium distance computer lenses. They end up being the glasses I wear when I'm at home even when I'm not in front of the computer. I now have to lift them up to see up close, but that's a reasonable compromise to wearing progressives.
I really want to find an optometrist who uses some alternative to the old phoropter system. My prescription is currently a bit "off" and I swear it's because the phoropter system is fundamentally flawed. My eyes adjust and adapt during the test, causing me to misreport the optimal setting. There just isn't enough time in a typical appointment to detect eyestrain or other issues with a particular prescription.
Presbyopia hit me about 10 years ago. Some people I know use all-day contacts for distance vision then wear glasses on top for computer use and reading. I'm considering it.
$10K MSRP for the optician's profiling equipment, https://navaophthalmic.com/product/i-profiler-plus/
Further reading: https://eyewiki.org/Dry_Eye_Syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorohexyloctane
It's really eerie how moist it makes your eyes feel after even a few uses. I have definite reservations about instilling megadoses of PFAS directly into my eyes but there's no doubt that it is amazingly effective.
This seems like something that could have a technical solution beyond just putting liquid in your eyes. I am wary as liquids are sometimes contaminated with bacteria or other substances. Perhaps screens or headbands that trigger blink reactions.
OP for now just wants to talk to people, I assume to understand their issues, what they tried, what makes it better and what makes it worse for them. Talking to people volunteering for a call is not dangerous.
For all we know, OP will not see any pattern that fits their hypothesis and leaves it at that.
Does the problem persist with contact lenses? Soft contact lenses can do a better job of correcting vision for someone with keratosis, as they conform to the wonky surface of the cornea.
Edit: Just realised you're probably doing market research rather than asking for yourself. Either way, people with keratosis, who don't fit into the box, might be something to consider.