so recently i had a viewer ask me which
brand of colorblind glasses I would recommend.
And really in the colorblind glasses world there's only
two major brands.
There's the Enchroma colorblind glasses
and then there are Pilestone colorblind glasses
And in this video, we're gonna break down the pros and cons of each
really, Pilestone vs. Enchroma
That's today's video. Let's take a look
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Now again recently, i had somebody reach out and ask me about colorblind glasses
and I figured, hey, I have both of these. Let's do a review of them.
And as always, at any point throughout the video, if you say, hey you want to look at them
a little bit more yourself, I'll put links to both of these products
in the video description below so you can find them easily.
and if you happen to be in the market for buying colorblind glasses,
you probably searched the Enchroma brand before.
This is the most popular colorblind glasses I think that are out there.
They might be the original colorblind glasses as well.
But, if you look them up, you'll probably find the sticker price is a little bit high.
Usually Enchroma colorblind glasses go for somewhere in the 300 US dollar range.
And whether you happen to be buying these for yourself or for a friend or a family member,
you might be thinking, wow, I don't even know
if these things are gonna work for them
how am I going to invest 300 dollars?
The alternative is to look for something cheaper, and if you're looking
in that market, then, there is one other brand out there and that is
Pilestone colorblind glasses. And usually
Pilestone runs in about a 100 dollar US range. So about
a third of the price. Now both brands here
again they're colorblind glasses. They both
work effectively the same.
They are a special, selective filter technology in the lenses
that help neutralize, kind of the confusion zones of color gradients
depending on what type of color blindness you have.
Again, that's just the basics of how they work
honestly, i don't know how the technology works between one brand
vs the other. I think both brands kind of keep that secret.
but as far as what you're getting, Enchroma vs. Pilestone,
there's some obvious differences in quality here.
First of all, with Pilestone glasses, uh, right away, biggest thing
is that their sticker price.
It's only about 100 US dollars.
So again, about a third cheaper than the Enchroma glasses.
What's really unique if you
go to their website, you'll notice that they have
many lens options out there for different types of colorblindness.
And that's something I really like because there are different types of colorblindness.
Most people, especially men, are some form of red green color vision deficient
or colorblindness. But with the other types that are out there,
at least Pilestone offers different lens colors.
Now as far as the quality of the lenses and the frames go for Pilestone,
that's really the big difference that I've noticed with the Enchroma brand.
The quality of the lenses themselves, again they have the different
options out there which are really nice,
but the quality of the plastic, the way the frames are made,
you can just tell they're not as fancy.
If you're at all in the glasses world, even if you go to any glasses shop,
you can usually kind of pick up and start to tell the quality isn't there.
The frame themselves, are about the most basic, cheap type of plastic
frame you can get. The frame plastic itself is
pretty bendable and flexible, so I don't think it's gonna break right away,
but i bet if you pushed on them too hard, especially on the hinges
I bet they would break.
As far as the lenses go, and when you're buying these types of glasses,
you're investing really in the lenses, not so much the frame.
In fact, if you don't even like their frames, they do at least have the option to send in
your own frame, and then they'll be able to cut out the lenses
designed specifically for your frame
I think they even have an option for putting your own prescription in the lenses.
And as far as the lenses go in these, uh, right away
you can see how much of the light that I'm using to shoot this video comes off of the lenses
This particular one has kind of a blue shimmer put on the front
It's not an anti-reflective, and I think it has to do with somewhat of them
trying to selectively filter out certain wavelengths
But of all the different lenses that they have, none of them seem to have
anti-reflective on them at all, so right away you're kind of missing out on that bonus feature.
As far as the lens material goes,
uh, I'm not exactly sure what the lens
material is for Pilestone.
I couldn't find anything on their website.
I personally can't tell just by touching it.
I do know that they have 100 percent UV blockage,
so I'm assuming it's probably polycarbonate.
Polycarbonate lenses, uh, are
nice because they are kind of safety
lenses. They block 100 percent UV light.
And they're very lightweight.
tThe downside is that they do scratch pretty easily.
And on top of that, the chromatic aberration,
the way colors kind of fringe out, especially
if you have a prescription lens of these,
that may not work out as well.
And if I ever find out that they're
a different type of plastic,
I'll put that in the description section below this video
so that you have an update of exactly what the material is made out of.
So yes, Pilestone has great options for different colors
and types of lenses, but the overall, uh,
frame quality, lens quality, is definitely lacking,
and I think that's really where the price difference is gonna come in.
Now let's take a break from Pilestone and switch over to the Enchroma colorblind glasses.
Now, again, Enchroma is around the 300 dollar US range.
I think if you're buying the kids glasses they're closer to the 200 US dollar range.
They're a little bit cheaper.
And sometimes you can get them on sale for certain deals
especially around the holidays and things like that.
Now if you ever go and check out my overview about Enchroma, they do
come in this cool little case. It comes with a bunch of other, like,
balloons and cleaning cases,
a cleaning cloth, things like that.
And they come in this really nice hard plastic case.
Now if you ever check on their website, they do have different options
For outdoor lenses like sunglasses
They have indoor lenses.
And they have a few different options for deutan vs
protan color vision deficiency.
They don't have all of the unique colors that Pilestone offers
but they at least have some very high quality ones for
people who are red green color vision deficient which
again are most people with color blindness.
Now right off the bat, if you ever pick up a pair of Enchroma glasses
yourself and try them on, you will notice instantly
the quality of them is way superior vs something
like Pilestone is.
The frame itself is made a lot better, just the
material, the plastic, seems to be way more sturdy.
The hinges are put together, and you can see that the hinges are
a good quality hinge. They're not gonna break that easily.
And even if you read on the side, they are designed in Burkley, California
but they are manufactured in Italy, and again in
eye care business, you'll find that most of the highest quality frames and manufacturing
are either done here in the United States, which are hard to find,
or they're made in Europe, such as Italy or France or somewhere.
Now if you've watched any of the other glasses reviews here on this channel,
I truly value the higher quality lens materials and how they're manufactured.
I think that does set a superior type of vision quality that you get from lenses.
And with Enchroma, the lens material is made with something called Trivex.
Trivex is a superior lens product.
It's very light. It's a safety material.
It offers 100 percent UV light protection.
And overall, just, the optical quality of Trivex is way better than most other types of plastic.
And then the other thing that I really like about the Enchroma lenses
is that they also have anti-reflective on them,
and it's not just the front surface again, like you can see here,
there's kind of a green blue rainbow color coming from them.
That's kind of like a shimmer sheen on the front surface.
But they also have anti-reflective even on the back.
And that's gonna overall help improve the quality and clarity of your vision
looking through the lenses.
And on top it's not just an anti-reflective, but they have
kind of an anti-oil, anti-smudge, anti-dust
kind of properties along with the anti-reflective.
But just like the Pilestone glasses, if you do go on the Enchroma website
they do offer different options if you don't like any of their frames.
They do have a larger frame selection.
Uh, but you can also send in your own frame and they'll put a
prescription lens in there for you. Again, you can check that out.
Now finally I want to comment on how these different
colorblind glasses work.
Do the Enchroma work better than the Pilestone?
Or vice versa, or do they work the same?
But before I go over that, drop a comment in the comment section below.
Have you tried either of these?
Are you colorblind yourself? Are you looking to get them for yourself?
Or maybe for a friend or family member?
Um, what do you like best about these so far?
Now when it really comes to the function of the lenses, do they
really work? Do they make a difference to your vision if you're colorblind?
Now myself, again I am not colorblind.
I will pass a colorblind test very easily.
If you're not sure if you're colorblind, if you're just watching this because you're interested,
I do have a video about colorblindness and figuring out if you're colorblind.
I'll put that in a whole video series in the video description below.
I myself am not colorblind, but I do have a friend Matt
who I featured in a previous video about the Enchroma glasses.
He's tried them both on. And he can vouch that yes, they both do work.
However, they work a little bit differently.
Where he could feel, at least with him form of colorblindness,
that the Enchroma glasses seemed to pop out the colors a little bit more,
a little bit better definition.
But he could also tell that with the Pilestone lenses,
that they did also work.
They just, again, worked a little bit differently.
And of course you can check out their websites. They have different testimonials
of people either reacting to them or at least vouching that yes they do actually work.
But I think that at least for myself, and being able to give my two cents,
about the quality of the lenses, and
which brand offers which, definitely the Pilestone offers the many different colors
and different options for different types of colorblindness
vs. the Enchroma.
But I still think that the Enchroma still has certainly the superior quality
of the lenses, frames designs, those sort of things.
So hey thanks for watching! If you found this video helpful
and informative, hit the like button for me.
Drop a comment below. Subscribe to the channel. And if
you want to learn more about colorblindness, like the genetics behind colorblindness.
If you wanna find out if you're colorblind yourself,
I do have a video going over figuring out if you're colorblind,
the original colorblind test called the Ishihara test.
And you want to check that all out, click or tap the screen over here to the side
so you can watch those easily.
Otherwise, this is Doctor Allen here from the Doctor Eye Health show.
Keep an eye on it, and we'll talk to you soon.