Ultrasonic cleaner for eyeglasses

July 22, 2022 11:21 AM

I was looking at inexpensive ultrasonic cleaners for eyeglasses on Amazon, but also saw a note from NYTimes Wirecutter that warned that ultrasonic cleaners may damage / scratch glasses. Do you use one? Which won? Any problems?
posted by GernBlandston to Shopping (7 answers total)

I read that warning on the Wirecutter too. Said yolo and bought a cheap one off amazon. I've been using it for several months without any issue. Every few days I put one drop of dish soap in with some lukewarm water, put my glasses in, cover them with the water, and turn it on. They come out perfect. You need a microfiber cloth on hand to dry them.
posted by Pacrand at 12:04 PM on July 22, 2022

Ditto cheap Amazon ultrasonic cleaner. No issues with scratching anything. Dish soap or hand soap works fine. Clean cloth to dry them. Tip: use hot water. They dry faster when you are done. Also use it to clean fountain pen nibs, dental appliances, metal/plastic watch bands, etc.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:35 PM on July 22, 2022

Careful using hot water if you have a plastic frame. It may deteriorate the plastic.
posted by bluefrog at 1:00 PM on July 22, 2022

The last time I was at the eyeglass place, they put my 2-year-old glasses in their ultrasonic cleaner.

What happened was the coating on the lenses, which being 2 years old had gotten some microscratches in them, crackled and flaked off over the next couple hours (but not all of it, leaving a crackled finish). I went back and complained but they gave me a lame "that happens sometimes, well it's a good thing you got new glasses" response.

So, it wasn't so much the ultrasonic cleaner damaged the glasses, but glasses with minor damage can have that damage increased by the vibrations.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:05 PM on July 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't clean my glasses in mine, but things I put in move around. It's possible that glasses might end up lens-down, and this would very likely scratch them.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 1:21 PM on July 22, 2022

I've been using a cheap Magnasonic to clean my eye and sunglasses for a decade. Zero scratches. Similarly to AzraelBrown's observation, I did notice that if the coating is damaged ultrasonic cleaning seemed to accelerate the coating loss, but that only happened to one pair of glasses out of a half dozen.

I "dry" the glasses with compressed air when I am done.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 1:33 PM on July 22, 2022

Anecdatally only, the last pair of glasses that I regularly used in an ultrasonic cleaner suffered from lens coating loss and the frames went weirdly white and matte around the ears, but as above, how much of that was the ultrasonic cleaner and how much of it was cheap already damaged lenses and frames?

I use an old toothbrush to gently clean the accumulated inter lens and frame muck out now.
posted by Kyol at 2:57 PM on July 22, 2022 [1 favorite]