This App Finds a Prescription by Scanning Your Glasses
Sometimes you just need (or want) a new pair of glasses, even if you can see perfectly using the ones you already have. In situations where your glasses no longer cut and you probably need a new prescription, this is the job of an ophthalmologist or ophthalmologist. But suppose your current prescription is still working and you want to order new glasses online, but you do not have a copy of the prescription.
You can try asking for a copy at the location where you last had your eye exam, but if more than a year or two have passed since your last visit (it depends on the state), your prescription may have expired and they may not be able to transfer it. … Or maybe the office you had your last eye exam has since closed, or you need a prescription outside of business hours. For these cases, there is an app that scans your current glasses and issues a prescription. Here’s what you need to know and how to use it.
How to use Liingo
The app is provided by the online eyewear store Liingo , which supposedly offers this service in the hopes that you will buy your new glasses from them. ( Warby Parker and GlassesUSA have similar tools.) The process is relatively simple: you download the Liingo app, and the voice of a cute British lady will guide you through everything.
To get a prescription, you will need glasses (with a prescription that works for you at the moment), a smartphone, a computer with a 12 “screen or larger, and what they call a” magnetic card “, credit card size / shape or driver’s license. This takes about 10 minutes in total and requires holding the glasses between the computer screen and the phone.
One thing should be noted from my experience: I started using a “magnetic card” with a white background, but the contrast on my skin was not enough, so I had to try again with a darker card for it to work. Other than that, it was pretty straightforward.
It works?
We spun the app to see how accurate it was. I still have the original recipe from my current pair of glasses and used the Liingo app to see if it could match the same. For the most part, it was. The spherical part of the recipe (the part where there are numbers for your left and right eyes that start with a plus or minus, like -1.75) was a perfect match, as was the cylindrical force (which measures the astigmatism I have).
The distance between the pupils was slightly biased: my previous prescription indicated that I had 63 millimeters, while in the Liingo app it was 59 millimeters. Finally, my axis number was very different. ( The axis indicates the angle (in degrees) between the two meridians of the astigmatic eye and ranges from 1 to 180.) In my original recipe, the axis for my right eye is 125 and for the left eye is 6, while the Liingo app lists these angles as 14 and 15 degrees respectively.
Something else to know
If your prescription has expired, it is highly recommended that you go to an optometrist in person to get a new one and also have regular eye exams. The Liingo app – and others like it – is not a substitute for an appointment with an optometrist or optometrist. But given that we live in a global pandemic, office visits are not always possible or an option for people with weakened immune systems.
In some cases, it is also possible to undergo an ophthalmological examination online , which we described in detail back in April. Also keep in mind that those with a stricter or more complex prescription may want to refrain from buying glasses online altogether, for the reasons we discussed in February . Otherwise, here’s our guide to buying glasses online, including six factors that can improve or ruin your shopping experience.