Gail On Tech

Are these the cheapest eye glasses ever?

I’ve just spent a very pleasant few days in the country with an old friend from my uni days — note that the ‘old’ in no way refers to either of us, just the passing of more years than we care to remember since we first met on an orientation week at the University of New England.

During the course of my little getaway, I remarked on how much I liked her new glasses, and was gobsmacked to learn that she had payed just $US12.95 (plus $US10 flat-rate postage) for them. That’s right, for prescription lenses in frames that could pass for any of the designer glasses that I would kill for!

Even more amazing, they weren’t the cheapest on the site — prices on the Zenni Optical site start from just $US8! For us gals, that means that you can have a whole ‘wardrobe’ of glasses to match every outfit and mood for just a fraction of the cost of what you’d pay for a very ho-hum pair of specs from the optometrist.

You can browse by frame styles or material, specialist categories (children, goggles, etc.), price and more. And because there are so many frames on the site, make use of the Favorites feature, where you can bookmark ones that take your fancy as you’re browsing (you’ll need to register on the site first to store these favourites for your next visit — it’s free).

Each frame has measurements for lens width and height, temple length, bridge width, and frame width and height, plus you can click on the Colors button to see what other colours it comes in. You can also add extras such as glare filtering and bifocal and multi-focal lenses are also available.

You’ll need to get a prescription from an optometrist for your particular sight correction details, then just click on the Order button of your chosen frame to enter your details and complete the simple order process.

With the Australian dollar close to parity with the US dollar at the moment, there are significant savings to be made here, especially if you have kids who wear glasses — they can go through quite a few pairs just in the rough and tumble of being a kid. The prices on this site make it possible to order a couple of spares without breaking the bank.

Zenni Optical Thanks, Mandy!