High Index Lenses

How High Index Glasses Tech Revolutionize Your Glasses

One modern invention when it comes to eye-wear is the high-index lens. Traditionally, glasses use additional material for bending light either at the ends of the glasses for the nearsighted, or more material at the center for the far-sighted. However, this modern technology allows you to do more with less. Here’s some information on the technique including its advantages.

Tech Breakthroughs

The troubles your eyes start to have with being able to see over time are often called “refractive errors. These can happen either with age or because of some other common problem with the eye. The errors just mean that your eye is unable to properly focus light. The result of this is various issues like blurriness, astigmatisms, and having difficulty seeing things close up or far away.

The traditional way to handle this is to make sure that your glasses or contacts focus the light properly in the areas where your eye can no longer do it. This is the reason why another solution for this problem, LASIK surgery, is actually called “refractive surgery” technically.  Traditional lenses add more and more material to gradually focus the light more and more as light passes through the glasses. High-index lenses instead make it so that the lenses are highly more efficient than the other way.

High-Index Lens Overview

To give you an idea of how the high-index lenses improve on the situation, it’s worth noting that regular lenses have the 1.50 refractive lenses made of plastic, which goes up by 0.02 if they are made of glass. The high-index versions can go as high as 1.74 while being made of the same material.

Some high-index options may also actually go even higher than this.

Weight Advantages, Thinness, and Comfort

One of the big advantages for using high index glasses is that the weight of the glasses tends to be less than what you get in other glasses of a similar type. This is because of the tech involved which uses efficiency over adding more material. As a result, you end up with glasses that are able to give you the same kind of vision as more traditional glasses while at the same time being much lighter because there’s less material.

All of this equates to more comfort. This applies to glasses made of the same type of material as well. You end up with glasses made of plastic with a high-index lens score that’s lighter than other glasses made of the exact same material that uses more of that material, for example.

This also means that the glasses will slip down your nose less often since the weight is what’s going to make it do that more. The larger your prescription was before, the more extra thickness and therefore weight will be on your glasses, and the more you’re going to notice a reduction in the nose slipping effect if you switch over to the high-index models.

Aesthetics

Another useful advantage worth mentioning is that those who need significant correction of refractive errors for their eyes will end up with lenses that have a lot of thickness to them. Some people may find this embarrassing even though it shouldn’t be a big deal. Therefore, high-index lenses add the additional benefit of making it so that you can have glasses of significant thinness regardless of how much correction you need. This can serve to conceal the nature of your prescription if this is something that you’re concerned about. It will also keep your glasses of a standard size no matter what so that you don’t feel out of place in any setting with overly thick glasses.

Obviously, this is a minor benefit compared to the others you get from the technology, but it can be worth mentioning given the fact that some people certainly care about this sort of consideration.

Scratch Proofing

For those who are tired of always having their glasses get scratched over and over through the merest of touches, there’s definitely a sense in which the high-index approach could help.  This is because of the density of the glasses. Due to their increased density, it’s simply more difficult to get a scratch onto the high index lenses than it would be on a standard index lens of the same type. There’s also less surface area to scratch since they’re more efficient and this means that they’d be heavier if wasn’t for this fact.

Eye Distortion Benefits

If you’re someone who happens to have a particularly strong prescription, this means that you might sometimes have an issue where other people can see your eyes as a different size than they actually are. This can be a disconcerting effect for both others and yourself. AS a result, one thing that will appeal to people who have this kind of distortion is that high index lenses tend to reduce it. Some lenses may actually eliminate the effect altogether.

This can be just as distracting to others as the thick lenses, if not even more so. That’s why it’s beneficial for people with thick lenses and high prescriptions to switch to high-index. You’ll get rid of that owl-eyes effect that people may notice during lectures or just when talking to you in general.

Other Considerations 

It’s worth noting that the cost for high-index lenses can often be higher than for traditional lenses, but many people are going to find that the advantages they get out of it are often worth it as a result. There are definitely options that are no longer that much more expensive, however. You also sometimes need to be more careful with the lenses as they can sometimes be more brittle than the more traditional approaches.

Additionally, it’s been noted that these lenses also tend to reflect light more than many other lenses of a similar type and size. Fortunately, you can cut back on this problem by making sure that you add anti-glare coating to the glasses that use this tech in order to make sure that the glare doesn’t get to you too much.

Making the Decision If You Have a High Prescription

What the choice comes down to, ultimately, is what sort of prescription you have. High-index lenses are often highly recommended to those who have a high prescription. They will sit more comfortably on your nose, they will weigh less, they will look better in profile because of the lens thickness, and they will even reduce the owl-eyes distortion effect from people looking right into your eyes since the high prescription will mean they will get magnification going the other way.

It’s also helpful since those with high prescriptions are going to potentially drop their glasses more since they’ll be heavier. The glasses themselves will also tend to be of particular importance and potentially higher cost since you end up being so blind without them. In this case, the anti-scratch properties of the high-index lenses comes in. You won’t have to take the risk of having to walk around with scratched glasses nearly as much.

In general, the high-index are going to make those with high-prescription glasses feel like they blend in better, all without sacrificing the degree of correction they need to be able to actually see.