What are Office Lenses?

Do I need Office Lenses?

Office lenses are also known as computer lenses, and they have revolutionised how we can help people with their near vision when you need to see things from 25cm out to around 1m in front you.

They're really good, I’ll sometimes explain them as being an enhanced reading lens. If you only need close glasses, it gives you that depth of focus that you you're missing, which is great.

Now I'll explain why we need them in the first place. As we all age, unfortunately, we do lose our ability to focus. So usually around your mid-forties, you end up with your first reading gasses, usually about a +1 reading power for that, and you actually still have enough focus left to be able to give yourself a good depth of focus. What people don't realize is it's you that does that focusing. The pair of glasses has a fixed focal point and when you first start to need reading glasses, it's usually around about your arms length away from you, but you can still bring the focus closer up to around 30cm. It's you that does all that focus. The glasses have one focus, one focal point.

Now that's important to remember because as you lose that ability to focus, you need a stronger lens to see the small stuff up close and a stronger lens has a shorter focal length. So that focus gets closer to you and it's great for reading but then you lose that arms length part of your vision because you don't have that natural depth of focus anymore.

You actually need a weaker lens to see further away from you. So if you're on a computer all day, you're going to need a different power to see the computer screen at your arms length than you do to see up close to read at 40cm and that does become a problem. In the past, we could give people a pair that's focused perfectly for the computer and a pair that's focused perfectly for reading. But you'd end up needing two pairs of glasses or we'd end up giving you sort of in-between pair where the focus wasn’t perfect for the arms length or for up close. It was a compromise. You can sort of see the screen a bit better and you can sort of read but not great for small stuff.

The good news is we now have office lenses, or computer lenses. They have been around for a good few years now and they're great because now they borrow a little bit of technology from varifocals. Okay. So they do have a very, very small change in them. Now some people panic when they hear the word varifocal because they've tried them in the past and they couldn't get on with them but this is very different.

The change in the lens is so slight, because you're going from about a meter away from you to around 40 centimeters away from you. So the change is minimal in that but it just gives you back that depth of focus that you're missing which is wonderful. They work brilliantly.

We can set the distance that they are focused out to, but for most people usually about a meter, or just over a metre away from you. Which means you’ve got the depth of focus back for the computer and for close reading.

They're not only good for working on computers and office setups, they're really good for loads of people. We have a couple of very keen bakers who use them so that they can actually stand and see down to the worktop and still read a recipe, things like that, at the same time, still with that depth of focus.

I can bring to mind a gentleman who we have helped who has a take-away business and as the orders come in, they are at a certain point away from him but he still needs to be able to chop. He said, in fact his words were, with these lenses he “is still able to chop onions without cutting his fingers off” and they work for him which is brilliant.

So they're really good for everyone who needs close glasses and once your reading power in close glasses get above about a +2, then it's worth thinking about an office lens anyway even if you're not sat in an office working on a computer all the time, just because it gives you that depth of focus, which works incredibly well as life isn't just fixed for one distance here or one distance there. Everything that we're do needs this depth of focus.

I did say that they borrow a little bit of technology from varifocals. You don't have the same problems that some people have with varifocals walking around because they're still close glasses. They're still reading glasses. You can't walk about in them anyway because the distance is blurred in them. They're just set for close so they work incredibly well for computers.

We have some people who wear varifocals normally all the time but when they sit at their computer, they pop their office lens on because it gives them a wider field of vision than the varifocal does for that same distance, which works incredibly well for them.

So once you've lost more of that natural focus, you're pinned into one focal point and as soon as you start moving that reading card, the book or whatever you're reading further away from you, it starts to go blurred, that's when you know that this type of lens would be a real benefit for you.

Hopefully that helps explain a little bit about what office lenses and computer lenses are. Think of them as enhanced reading lenses, reading lenses with a depth of focus.