The Netflix of Prescription Glasses: A Warby Parker Review

All of these high quality images are fine and dandy, but glasses need to be tried on in order to really get a good idea, right? Thankfully, Warby Parker has addressed this need with their free “home try-on” program. After creating an account, you can choose up to five glasses and/or sunglasses and they’ll ship them to your home. The package arrives as a nice case with the chosen glasses inside, each with non-prescription lenses. You have five full days to try them on, show your friends and family, and get opinions on which pair is right for you.

When you’re done with the evaluation, simply package them back up, affix the included pre-paid return label, and drop it off with UPS. It’s like the Netflix of glasses.

You don’t have to commit to anything, of course. If you didn’t like any of the glasses you can select up to another five pairs for a second round of home try-on, or you can simply walk away. Assuming you did find a pair you liked, you can then log back on to the Warby Parker website and choose to purchase the frame. At this point, you’ll need your prescription information, and that’s where I hit a bit of snag.

“Better or Worse?”

I’ve worn glasses since early high school, but I’ve had the same pair for almost 8 years now so I decided it was time to visit an ophthalmologist and get my prescription checked. I visited my doctor’s office and had a very quick encounter; he measured the prescription of my current glasses, did a few quick tweaks (“one or two? three, four? better, worse?”) and wrote me a prescription.

I came home and entered the information into Warby Parker’s website but I realized that my doctor had failed to provide me with my pupillary distance (PD) measurement. This measurement of the distance between the centers of each pupil is important for prescription eyeglasses and is usually calculated by the technicians at eyeglass stores.

By now it was after business hours and I wasn’t able to return to my doctor’s office to get this measurement. But, again, Warby Parker has this covered. Using a webcam and a credit card, their website can calculate your PD online. The theory goes that a credit card is a known size so if you take a picture of your face while holding a credit card under your nose, the distance between your pupils can be accurately measured.

So how accurate is it? Well, I ended up having to return to my eye doctor (which I’ll describe in a moment), and I had my PD measured by their official instruments. According to the ophthalmologist, my PD value is 65mm; Warby Parker’s website calculated it at 64mm. Not bad.

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