I've ordered from Zenni Optical several times now. My first order was for myself and AJ, and the second order was for a pair of prescription sunglasses for myself. This time we've ordered glasses for Mr. A, whose arm has grown shorter in the last few months so he has been having a difficult time reading fine print.
I logged in to Zenni Optical on Sunday and was excited to see they have a brand new feature: the option to upload a photograph of your face and “try” on the frames! Nice option, Zenni Optical! That has been the hardest part of ordering glasses online! It's hard enough to figure out what looks good on your face when you can actually try on the frames. But now it looks like Zenni has solved that problem, too.
I promptly took a photo of Mr. A and uploaded it. You'll need a photo that is at least 260 x 260 pixels, and the person's face should be looking straight at the camera. I got lucky and my first try uploading Mr. A's photo worked great. I then uploaded a photo of myself, I couldn't resist, and my photo wasn't exactly spot on so I had to put dots where my pupils were. So the good news is, even if your photo isn't exactly perfect, Zenni Optical will ask for help in figuring out where your pupils are, so that the program knows where to place the frames on your face.
Mr. A has a slight astigmatism, and was diagnosed with Presbyopia. Other than that little problem, which is typical for a middle aged person, his eyes are healthy. His distance vision is at 20/40 and passes for driving.
The optometrist said Mr. A would benefit from progressives, if he wanted to wear glasses. She said his vision could be sharper, but he could go without and just use readers for closeup work. So he could just go on without using any glasses at all, but he has been finding night time driving to be a little bit difficult.
So many choices.
I decided to go to Zenni Optical and see what it would cost to just bite the bullet and get him a pair of progressives. In addition to the new Frame Fit option, I saw that the $8 frames have now gone down to $6.95. Amazing.
Another very nice enhancement to the site are the options to narrow your selection by clicking checkboxes of what you need. You can choose to search and narrow your options by:
- Prescription type (single, bifocal, progressive)
- Pd (pupillary distance)
- Gender (Unisex, Men, Women, Children)
- Type (Full Rim, Half Rim, Rimless, Sunshade, Goggles)
- Style (Memory Titanium, Mixed Material, Acetate/Plastic, Aluminum Alloy)
- Shape (Rectangular, Oval, Aviator, Round
- Size (Small, Medium, Large)
- Color (Burgundy, Blue, Black, Brown, Clear and more)
I decided since it worked out good for me to go with the Memory Titanium frames that we'd try those for Mr. A as well.
I checked his pupillary distance and found it to be 64, so narrowed down the options by that option as well.
Then it was just a matter of “trying” on the glasses to the photo of Mr. A I'd uploaded, and finding out what he liked. The option to narrow down the selections was really very helpful.
In the end, we ended up choosing #316221.
Zenni says it will take about three weeks to ship his glasses. In the meantime, he's going to stick with using the readers he bought a few weeks back.
I'm really hoping these progressives will work well for Mr. A. I was a little apprehensive about getting a person new to glasses a pair of progressives from an online shop, but Mr. A was loathe to spend $170 on them from Costco like I did when I bought my last pair.
The final cost came to $46.56.
I will let you know how the glasses work out for Mr. A once they arrive.
Have you ordered from Zenni Optical?
I haven’t ordered from them yet, but there is a pair of frames that I’ve seen that I want to order and then maybe have the lenses put in by my regular optometrist. My company covers lenses 100% so that will work out cheaper than getting it at the store. Do an update once you get them please. 🙂
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:42 am
@Sandy, I will definitely do an update and let you know how it goes!
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Hello! I love Zenni Optical–about three years ago I purchased a pair of prescription sunglasses that cost $17.95 shipped. They look great, and I still have them!
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:44 am
@Amanda, awesome! Yes, I ordered prescription single vision sunglasses not too long ago and have been very pleased with them. First time in my life that I was able to own prescription sunglasses! And in Arizona, it’s important to have sunglasses because of the bright sunshine we have here so much of the time. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
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I never heard of Zenni. My cousin is a lens rep for one of the major lens makers. She tells me that people pay $1,000+ for frames and lenses! I’ll get her thoughts on Zenni and report back.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:55 am
@Kristen, I had not heard of glasses costing quite THAT much! Although one of my coworkers regularly pays around $500 for prescription glasses. I would have a hard time paying over $200! It will be interesting to hear what your cousin has to say about Zenni Optical… although I can’t imagine the review will be good considering the low prices. Zenni is cutting out the middle man and the major suppliers probably don’t like it one little bit. The sad thing is there are a lot of people who are on very low incomes who need glasses but cannot afford them and some may not have the resource of the Internet. The state of Arizona used to have assistance to people under a certain income for free single vision glasses but I understand funding has been cut. When I was living below the poverty level I qualified for a couple of years to get a pair of glasses myself. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
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For $1,000 those glasses better put themselves onto my face with no help.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:55 am
@Sandy, hah! I agree!
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I agree with you. You’re talking probably a few hundred of the top of the line lenses and then a few hundred for some name on the frames. The markup on the frames is pretty unbelievable, just like alot things :).
Also, she never heard of Zenni. She didn’t think her company sold to them. Her company is one of the higher end lens companies.. You know the ones where you have to have top insurance or be rich to afford them 🙂
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how does one obtain the distance from pupil to lens?
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
January 11th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
@Ellie, hi there. If you go to the Zenni Optical site you will find the directions to measuring the pupillary distance. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
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we ordered numerous pairs for our kids thru Zenni and have had excellent experiences. Now I am considering trying them for my own progressive prescription.
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