The majority of the people to-day does not realize how important a good quality pair of sunglasses is for their eyes. This is because so many stores sell cheap sunglasses as they are only worried about net profit and not weather or not people are effecting their eye sight or not. It is not just the UV rating that is important but also the quality of the optics which gives you the clarity of vision with out any distortion no matter were out the lens you look you should have the same clarity with absolutely NO distortion.
So many people use the excuse that they are always losing and dropping their glasses and that is why they are only prepared to buy the cheaper glasses but that is just a very feeble excuse as when people pay a $100.00 plus or minus for something they are more inclined to look after it than when paying $10.00 for the same thing. It would be totally different if it was just a cost factor and not a quality factor that did not affect your eyesight. The reason why most people lose or damage their glasses is because when one takes them off one does not know what to do with them so either one puts them on their head or down some were, too easy to forget about. For about $30.00 one can buy a reasonable good neck tie and overcome the problem as then the glasses would be either hanging around their neck or on their face.
Another very important factor is if one does a lot of out door activities like fishing, riding motor cycles, shooting etc, etc it is of great importance to make sure that the lenses on the glasses are impact resistant as one is very vulnerable and it is easy for accidents to happen . The way that lenses are tested is called a drop ball test which pretty much describes it self as the lens is placed on a machine and then a steel ball is dropped on the lens from increasing heights until the lens cracks or breaks thus determining the strength of the lens. The FDA has certain minimum specifications that they recommend for outdoor activities and active sports.
Not many manufactures exceed theses FDA specifications unfortunately as most are more worried about maximum profit instead of spending a dollar or two more and having the best quality available. This drop ball test is recognized all over the world as the way to test lenses. The department ANSI which is supposed to be who specifies if supposedly SAFETY glasses are what they say they are do not recognize the drop ball test which is really scary as what other way is there to test the impact resistance of a lens. The quality of supposedly safety glasses is worse than poor as the optics are really just about non existent with so much distortion it is a wonder that more people have not hurt themselves just from the poor quality of vision that the inferior optics gives one. It is impossible to manufacture a pair of glasses or safety glasses with any kind of quality optics and sell them for $10.00. It is the old story especially in this case, “you pay peanuts you get monkeys”.
In conclusion one has to ask one self what are my eyes worth?