What is the perfect vision score?

Many people think that 20/20 means "perfect vision." But "20/20" really just means "normal distance vision."

The number ratio we are all familiar with such as "20/20" or "20/40" or even "20/400" are measures of distance visual acuity, or sharpness. They do not give any idea of what your near vision might be. [There are also other aspects of vision that are not being reported in the 20/20 ratio, such as contrast sensitivity and field-of-vision.]

And Yes, many young people can see with higher acuity (i.e "better vision") than 20/20. We often see patients attain 20/16 and 20/12.5 acuity after wavefront LASIK. The maximum fine acuity that the human eye is capable of is somewhere around 20/08.

_Written by J. Trevor Woodhams, M.D. - Chief of Surgery, Woodhams Eye Clinic