Wake up, Zoom class, break, Zoom class, Zoom class, online homework, type up an article, Zoom meeting, Facetime my family, go to sleep, repeat.

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many normal activities online. 

After particularly full days of staring at screens, I often get headaches with dry/sore eyes and have a hard time falling asleep at night, even with the “night shift” turned on on all my devices. 

I know a couple of people who have touted their blue-light filtering glasses, and I’ve scoffed at their belief that they work. But as my screen time shot up, I began to consider it.

I shopped around on Amazon one night after I had a splitting headache above my left eye. If I was going to get a pair, they had to be cheap but also stylish enough that I didn’t feel embarrassed to wear them on Zoom.

Finally, I settled on a pair of Cyxus for about $20. Prices on Amazon varied from $13 to $60, so I thought I’d look for the cheapest, cutest style with the best reviews.

Friday

Promptly at 10 am, I went down to the mailroom to receive my glasses. They came in a little box.

The glasses came with a case, lens cleaning cloth, business card, blue light, and a blue-light sensitive card.

Of course, I put them on right away and sent a photo to my mom. Immediately, I could tell something was different. The light in my room became tinged with yellow. They felt a little tight on the sides.

I picked up my laptop and began plugging away at an article. I don’t know how much it helped, but it sure made me feel cool.

I noticed that if I just stared at the screen, my eyes got more used to the glasses than if I let my eyes wander off to the rest of my room. It felt like I needed to build up the tolerance to look through the lenses.

I felt a little bit of a strain to look at the screen, so after about an hour of working online, I took them off and took a break from computers.

Then I picked up the card and tested their “blue light torch” (I forgot that torch was another word for flashlight for a split second and imagined blue flames shooting out of the little keychain).

Shining the light through the glasses onto the card produced no blue smudge on the testing area.

Saturday

I didn’t go on my screens much this day, until the end of the evening when I began working on Rstudio for Principles of Ecology. I almost forgot to put them on, but I remembered just as I opened my laptop.

I found that I was more used to the feeling on this day. I worked for an hour on my computer and then facetimed my family. I didn’t feel any sort of strain in my eyes. Only a slight pressure where the sides pressed into my skull a little bit.

Sunday 

I woke up and started reading the rest of a 30-page PDF, this time I remembered my glasses right away (though I did have to take off my prescription ones to wear these).

They felt the most normal in my eyes this day. I didn’t really feel like I was wearing anything other than my normal glasses, except for the weird fact that since I wasn’t wearing contacts this time, whenever I looked up everything was blurry. I don’t think I’d want to get the blue light blocking “coating” put onto my prescription lenses, I’m fine with wearing contacts or switching glasses.

Overall

Since I’m not an eye doctor, and I didn’t do any research other than listening to a couple of coworkers and friends say they have blue light blocking glasses, I can’t say I fully recommend getting these. 

However, the testing card they sent me very obviously turned blue when blue light was shone on it, and very obviously did NOT turn blue when the blue light was shone through the glasses. These glasses clearly block bright blue light from blue lightbulbs. Does it block it from screens? Can’t say. 

Are these glasses cute and relatively inexpensive? Yeah. Could it have been a placebo effect simply because I like how they look? Probably. 

Rating: 8/10