12 years ago, I walked into a second hand eye glasses shop in India and they had one of these machines. It was amazingly effective. I felt duped by all the optometrist appointments asking me about A or B.

To me, the tradeoff of an expensive modern machine vs an cheaper iterative process seems logical. I think it's funny that a second hand shop has the fancy equipment... but they must know it sells glasses more effectively.

Here, the machine results are used as a starting point, validated by A/B but I don't know if the human part is effective or just theater.

Well, assuming the optometrist charges around $50 per hour, after 10 patients it would pay for itself. I assume the machine is simply cheaper, which is why it was used.

Duped, because they are doing it the old-fashioned way?

Because they are making theater to justify their cost.

Did the machine tell you if anything else was wrong with your eyes? Could it?

It could determine my index accurately. It couldn’t tell if I had symptomless eye cancer, however.

Eye exams are not easy or one size fits all. The machine does objective refraction, which is a different and more error prone method than subjective refraction. Also for multifocals you'll need a more tailored prescription. There's definitely progress in autorefractors though!

This machine is not new. I remember it being used to approximate my prescription when I joined the US Army almost 20 years ago.

They can now check ocular pressure without the puff!

That's amazing! The puff is soooo uncomfortable! Is the technology to do this widespread?

It looks like it is becoming more common place.

iCare Tonometer