A couple of days ago a thread popped up on our Reader Forum: Oh My Slipping Glasses. Fine time to update you on what’s been going on with ROKA I thought, because I just updated my ROKA eyewear.

When it comes to glasses I only wear ROKAs and only with prescription lenses, both clear and tinted. I typically just buy my ROKA’s from the website, incognito, so I have the, ahem, privilege of going through what you all go through with process and the service. ROKA has updated what they sell for prescription lenses, and I have “updated” how it is I place my orders with them.

Single Prescription

I’ll tell you about my gripes, and how I addressed my gripes. My gripes are not with ROKA; you could not ask for a more user-friendly purchase experience. My gripes center around the differences between eyewear that function for me versus eyewear that function for normal people.

My first whine centers on my single prescription eyewear, which I have on right now as I’m typing this. I use this eyewear when reading, and during computer work, and often in my workshop. I’m an active worker in my workshop, looking up, down, upside down, and it doesn’t matter how much I spend on a frame from Costco or Sam’s Club – including expensive designer frames – that frame is sliding down my nose or falling onto the ground within weeks or months of purchase. ROKA solves that. Maybe Warby Parker does too, but I’ve got no motivation to try yet another frame that is not sports-oriented. But…

I was originally less impressed with ROKA’s lenses. Frames, great. Lenses, not so much. They scratched too easily for my use. Simply put, ROKA made better frames, but Costco’s labs produced a better single prescription lens. Then early this year I heard that ROKA changed lens suppliers, and the new lenses had better coatings. So, I ordered up a new pair of ROKA Hunters and danged if, so far, the lens isn’t superior (or it seems to after 4 months of ownership).

But here is the key, from my experience. Analyze with granular detail exactly how you use your near prescription glass. Do you type at a desktop computer, and do you do that more than you do anything else with that glass? If so, measure the distance from your eye to the computer screen. That’s your “computer prescription.” When you visit your optometrist, tell him or her that this is the operative distance to use for the prescription. Just know that when you’re reading yourself to sleep with your Kindle you’ll have to hold it a bit further away from your face if you use a computer prescription for book or Kindle reading.

Progressive Prescription

I was very happy when ROKA started offering this. I have several pairs of ROKAs – Kona, Barton, Hunter, Booker and other frames – and I have them in brown (sunglass) and clear lenses. The brown lens I use for driving, and I would use it for cycling except I just don’t ride with eyewear. I use my clear progressives for night driving and there is one exception to my earlier statement: I use progressives for indoor cycling. And, for treadmill running (on Zwift, or for whatever I’m looking at on that screen in front of my treadmill).

You have to be even more proactive in describing exactly what you want, if you want ROKA to deliver a finished product that works perfectly. It starts with your optometrist. Personally, I wouldn’t even let my optometrist perform an exam for my “reading” prescription if I’m not going to ever get a glass made with that prescription. That’ll just confuse your optician (the person who sells you your eyewear). You only want to present your optician with two numbers: distance and near and, in my case, “near” is my computer prescription. For me progressives are necessary for one reason: I occasionally need to read something, but otherwise it’s a distance lens, and “distance” is anything that’s 4 feet in front of me to 40 miles in front of me. That’s all the same prescription. When I’m on a trainer, and am looking on a big screen in front of the bike, that’s a distance prescription. But if I need to look down at a head unit, or my iPhone, that’s my computer prescription. When I’m driving, looking down the highway is the distance prescription, looking at my dashboard or nav system is my computer prescription.

The biggest problem people have with progressives, I suspect, is that the optician and lens maker try to make that lens do too much. Progressive lenses have 3 prescriptions in them, and danged of your optician isn’t bound and determined to have 3 prescriptions in there. Those 3 prescriptions work this way: Distance is usually highest up on the lens (this is what you’d want as a motorist or a cyclist), then a nearer prescription, then the reading prescription at the bottom. But I want more of the real estate in that lens optimized for distance, and the bottom third to be my computer prescription. You need to know what you want, and tell ROKA what you want, so that they make the glass right.

They’ll ask you to put on the glass – they have a try-on kit they’ll send you for this, with a return shipping label (easy peasy) – and they’ll have you take a selfie with their eyewear frame on, so that they know where to place the transitions. ROKA can vary where the transition occurs from prescription to prescription in a progressive lens, and I tell them in advance that I’d like the transition from my distance prescription to occur as low as is practicable on the lens. What I make sure my optician understands is that I want the distance prescription to dominate the glass; and I don’t want a “reading” prescription in there at all or, to put it another way, my computer prescription is my reading prescription, and this prescription is what sits at the bottom of the glass.

Don’t try to use your progressives as a reading glass. A single prescription glass has a much wider usable field, and you can read from left to right without moving your head. If you try to read with a progressive lens you’ll look like someone at center court watching a tennis match. But if you have your progressives built with your distance prescription as predominant your progressives can work quite well as a stand-alone distance glass. I have had progressives that, for example, are hellish in a movie theater, because the glass tries to do too much. I used to only take a distance glass to the movies. Now I can take my progressives because I took a little more control over what product gets delivered to me.

One final recommendation: Map out this strategy with your optometrist. You have to have one of these, because they write your optical prescription. You need to describe your use case.

ROKA has, as of this writing, just begun their Memorial Day Sale, which they say is up to 50 percent off, but don’t get too excited. Operative is the “up to” phrase. I’m finding that my ROKA goggle of choice is 20% off. I just bought a Booker as my newest progressive, and found that this frame – a combo of plastic + metal temples – is 15% off. ROKA has become one of my “daily” brands, and I keep track of these: brands I rely on daily, whether I like the brand or not, and for which there are little acceptable alternatives. For me, it’s Apple, AT&T, HOKA, ROKA and a few others. I ask myself why it is that I’ve become so attached to certain brands, and how to best manage those relationships. ROKA is in charge of how I see the world, which is a pretty heavy responsibility.