Glasses and contact lens wearers who are interested in Apple’s Vision Pro, which will finally be available in Germany from Friday (July 12), will need so-called optical inserts for the device. These are manufactured by supplier Zeiss. They have published more information on their website about how the process should work.
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This process has become somewhat easier than in the US, where you may need an expensive prescription from an ophthalmologist. In addition, Zeiss now offers a tool with which you can check whether your own values ​​can also be processed into optical inserts, which is a great relief. The cost, however, is quite unpleasant: instead of 150 US dollars plus tax, you pay 169 euros for a prescription jar in this country. In addition, there may also be a new light seal, which costs 219 euros in this country.
What Zeiss Needs for a Recipe
On a freshly installed German-language Zeiss website for optical inserts That’s far more detailed information than Apple’s, where, among other things, it misleadingly omits eyeglass prescriptions Must have a license number and signature of the prescriber Tote. Instead, Zeiss also accepts customer cards, eyeglass passports, invoices from opticians and “medical prescriptions for glasses or similar”. Handwritten notes on paper, printouts from autorefractometers and foreign prescriptions are not valid. If you do not have any values, you should contact an optician or ophthalmologist.
To order optical inserts, proceed as usual on the Apple website. There, a number of standard questions have to be answered (glasses wearer, type of visual impairment, current size of the light seal) in order to finally check the head via iPhone or iPad with Face ID, as is also the case when ordering the Vision Pro regularly. This will determine whether you need a new light seal for the optical insert. Our tests resulted in the same new light seal size three times, and once we were told we could keep the old one. Since Apple wants to see the aforementioned 219 euros for the component, it is better to repeat the process several times.
pre-assessment of powers
The Zeiss website allows you to check the values ​​before uploading your glasses passport, invoice or prescription during the order process. This saves you from disappointment. For the sphere value, Sph is possible from -12.50 to +6.75, for the cylinder a maximum of -4.50 to +4.50 cylinder. Anyone who suffers from severe astigmatism should stay out. For the axis, Zeiss accepts values ​​between 0 and 178. Interestingly, it is also possible to specify an additional value, although this is for progressive lenses – it initially remained unclear what Zeiss did with these values.
The company emphasizes in a brief FAQ that prescriptions for contact lenses and work glasses are not accepted. Zeiss optical inserts must be manufactured and delivered in just under two weeks. Just like in the United States, the company first checks the prices and then announces whether they are accepted. Apple offers free engraving on optical inserts to make them easier to distinguish.
Updates
8 July 2024,
13:54
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According to Zeiss, additional values ​​(add) are used to make the lenses user-friendly. “If additional strength is required for near vision, the final values ​​may differ from the actual order values. This ultimately serves to relieve eye strain and forms the basis for the best possible user experience with Apple Vision Pro.” Information about the person’s age (under or over 40 years) is also provided to customize the optical inserts “individually and age-appropriately for each wearer”. Here, too, there may be “slight variations in values”.
(B.Sc.)
