Ready-made reading glasses are one of the great bargains in eyewear. They are also routinely used by people who should be wearing something else. Both of those statements are true at once.
What a ready-made reader is
A ready-made reader has the same magnification in both lenses, in fixed steps — commonly +1.00, +1.50, +2.00 and upward to +4.00. It corrects nothing except near focus, and it assumes both of your eyes need the same amount of help.
Choosing a strength if you already use one
Order the strength you use now. Age-based charts circulate widely online and they are a rough guide at best, because the strength that suits you depends on your arm length and reading distance as much as anything else.
The point at which they stop working
- Your two eyes differ. A ready-made pair applies one strength to both. If your eyes need meaningfully different correction, a ready-made reader will always feel slightly wrong in one eye.
- You have astigmatism. Ready-made lenses do not correct it. Magnification alone will not sharpen the blur.
- You are getting headaches. A reader that is too strong pulls your focus closer than you want to hold a book, and that fight produces exactly the headache people blame on screens.
- Distance is also blurring. That is a different problem entirely, and no reader addresses it.
What we sell, and what we do not
We stock ready-made readers and sun readers in standard strengths. We do not test eyesight, we do not fit prescription lenses, and we cannot act on a prescription you send us. If any of the four situations above describes you, the right next step is an optometrist, not a larger order from us.
A note on multipacks
Buying three or five pairs at once is not a gimmick if you actually lose readers, which most people do. Keep one where you read, one where you work, one in the bag you always carry. The pairs you never have to hunt for are the ones you will use.