Need Help With Corrective Vision Masks

[Downing]

Grant,

I don't have an alternative choice for you, sorry, but I did want to say that I've seen a lot of recent praise for Prescription Dive Masks. To be accurate, though, I also read one negative review on Undercurrent's Forum a few months ago. But that's the only negative one I've ever seen out of many, many reviews and was totally contrary to my personal experience with them, thankfully. I've forgotten the details of that one review but I think the poster was having a hard time getting his mask back from them.

I received my most recent mask from PDM about 10 days after I mailed it to them, and, as always, I'm very happy with it. I also suffer from extreme nearsightedness and in the last fifteen years or so have had to wear bifocals for reading. So I know what you mean about having problems reading your computer. My PDM mask is every bit as good as wearing my glasses, and I can easily read my computer while wearing it.

But if I could make a suggestion, I would buy my mask from a LDS first to make sure it fits properly, then send it off to be fitted for lenses. With PDM, and probably anyone else, you can call them ahead of time to confirm they can do the mask the way you need, although PDM's, and perhaps the others websites as well, makes it clear they can do any mask that's on the market.

I'm not trying to plug PDM, although it may sound like it. But this is my third PDM mask since becoming certified in 2005, and they've always done an excellent job for me so I never hesitate to recommend them.

Good luck with your choice.

 

[reefduffer]

If it's just a "reading glasses" issue, look at
XS Scuba Fusion 2 gauge Reader Mask, #MA280
I'm really happy with mine, solves my gauge reading problem, fits well.
Call LP on this, you'll probably get a significantly better price.

 

[RetMTFE]

Not sure why people like to spend money on prescription masks. I got contacts specifically for diving and have never had any problems. I wear top of the line contacts and a six month supply is about 1/3 the cost of a prescription mask. Plus...I get to wear any mask I want.

 

[deco_martini]

Not sure why people like to spend money on prescription masks. I got contacts specifically for diving and have never had any problems. I wear top of the line contacts and a six month supply is about 1/3 the cost of a prescription mask. Plus...I get to wear any mask I want.

Is that with farsightedness? I wear reading glasses for farsightedness, and the disadvantage to keeping them on when driving it is that scratches and particles on my windshield stand out if I drive in them. Would contacts make the surface of the mask stand out to you? Versus if the mask was corrective and the view beyond the mask would be corrected and not the view of the mask itself?

 

[Downing]

Not sure why people like to spend money on prescription masks. I got contacts specifically for diving and have never had any problems. I wear top of the line contacts and a six month supply is about 1/3 the cost of a prescription mask. Plus...I get to wear any mask I want.

Well, I can't speak for others, but as for myself I can tell you that I don't really like to spend money on prescription masks but I do it anyway and here's why:

I'm in my early 50's and have worn glasses since first grade, when my teacher and parents realized I couldn't read the blackboard--a fact which I already knew but didn't also know that a student with normal vision could actually see what the teacher was writing up there. Until then I thought the world was just one big fuzzball until you got a few feet away from whatever you were looking at.

I hated having to wear glasses, so I tried contact lenses when I was around twelve. Unfortunately, my eyeballs were too sensitive and it literally felt like I had sandpaper in my eyes. I remember at the time the optometrist said there were some soft lenses relatively new to market--this would be about 1967 or so--but that they were very expensive compared to the standard (hard) lenses that he had given me to try. He recommended that we not get them because my eyeballs had reacted so badly to the hard lenses that maybe even the soft ones wouldn't work and then my parents would be out what to them at the time was a significant amount of money with nothing to show for it. And really, that was ok by me because I wasn't all that wild about contacts anyway. They seemed like a big hassle, and I was already used to wearing glasses even though I had the kind of a love/hate relationship with them that only an active person who wears glasses could understand.

That was my one and only shot at wearing contacts.

Now I'm basically an old dog that doesn't want to learn new tricks just to dive--especially when I can just as easily or maybe even easier slap on a mask, which I would have to do prescription or not. Heck, I'm not even sure there's such a thing as bifocal contacts, which is what I would need since I've been wearing bifocal glasses for about 15 years.

As far as you getting to wear any mask you want, well, me too. Prescription Dive Masks states on its website in the FAQs section: We put any prescription in any dive mask. Single vision, bi-focals or gauge readers. Any dive mask at all. I assume they mean it.

As far as the cost of contacts vs prescription masks, I guess I could argue that since a prescription dive mask will last me for years that means I come out ahead, unless of course you want to factor in the cost of glasses, too, I suppose. But I'm not going to switch to contacts full-time at this ahem, later stage in my life, so for me the cost of my glasses is a fixed cost and maybe it shouldn't be counted. And anyway, to me it's not really about cost when it comes to seeing well. It's more like a necessary evil.

To each his own, my friend.

 

[awdemeo]

Welcome to Prescription Dive Masks 1-800-538-2878
my dad also has used this place in a cressi big eye and it was a great fit they even put magnifiers in the bottom so he could read his gages still