How come you can buy reading glasses for a few bucks at pharmacies or Wal-Mart, but they don’t make them for being able to see farther away?

Question

Is the lens grinding process more complicated or is there just too much variation in eyesight to make them feasible on a mass scale?

In: Other

Answer 1

Many of these comments are wrong, cheap off the shelf glasses for near sightedness do exist, as I’ve used them to great effect for some years before I got proper prescription glasses.

I got them at a book and interior tidbit type chain store, that had a shelf with normal reading glasses, from +4 to +0.25, and then the next shelf continued in the same direction with glasses from -0.5 up to -3 in 0.25 diopter increments.

Worked great for far less eye strain when driving, and while not as good as prescription glasses, just looking across the store and trying different glasses you’d easily find a pair that dramatically improved your nearsightedness. I found that getting within about a quarter diopter would be close enough to where the glasses help significantly, but obviously with some eye strain if you don’t get it perfect. I only got prescription glasses as my myopia got worse.

And yes, reading glasses are just magnifying glasses in a frame, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less complex to make, especially in cheap plastic lenses, than negative diopter glasses. The difference is literally just concave vs convex shape in the lense.