If you happen to be someone who wears prescription glasses which have bifocal or progressive lenses in them, you may want to sit up and pay attention right now. Thanks to PixelOptics, your life – and your eyes – could make a drastic change in the near future. Beginning in June, the company will roll out their electronic glasses. The spectacles – called emPower – allows you to quickly switch between different perscriptions. You can use one for reading things close to your face and one for looking at things from afar.

These specs use a very thin layer of little liquid crystals stuffed in between the plastic layers. Electronic current from the rechargeable battery changes the focal power of the lens faster than you can blink. The emPower can be run for about three days on a single charge, so you won’t have to worry about this every few hours. The company promises that the way your eyes work will be revolutionized:

• Focus as fast as you can blink your eye.
• Provide an invisible electronic near focus zone when desired.
• Offer three modes of operation: automatic, manual on, manual off.
• Provide wider fields of view compared to a progressive addition lens.
• Allow for less distortion than a progressive addition lens.
• Vision correction for all ranges of sight: far, near, and in between.
• Allow you to turn near reading power off when desired.
• Rechargeable hidden battery.

The glasses are expected to hit the market in only two areas at first – Virginia and North Carolina. However, the company has plans to quickly expand across the country prior to the end of 2011. The spec won’t be cheap: a pair will cost you around a thousand bucks. It’s a matter of comfort and convenience, I suppose. I know I will totally take a look at these myself.

What about you? Would you trust your eyesight to a pair of high-tech “electronic” glasses?

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