Biofinity Energys are monthly contact lenses made by CooperVision, designed specifically for people who spend long hours looking at screens. They use the same silicone hydrogel material as standard Biofinity lenses but add an optical feature that eases strain on the focusing muscles inside your eyes. The result is a lens aimed at reducing the tired, dry, heavy-eyed feeling many people get after a full day of digital device use.
How They Differ From Standard Biofinity Lenses
The key difference is a feature CooperVision calls DigitalBoost technology. It’s an aspheric lens design that builds a small amount of extra focusing power, specifically +0.30 diopters, into the lower portion of the lens. That slight boost does some of the close-up focusing work your eye muscles would otherwise have to do on their own. When you shift your gaze down to a phone or tablet (the natural reading position), the lens picks up a fraction of the effort, reducing the load on the tiny ciliary muscle that reshapes your eye’s internal lens to focus at short distances.
Standard Biofinity lenses correct your distance vision and leave all near-focusing work to your eyes. For someone who glances at a screen occasionally, that’s fine. But if you’re staring at a laptop for eight hours and then scrolling your phone on the commute home, your focusing muscles are working overtime. The Energys version is built for that scenario.
This is not the same thing as a multifocal or bifocal lens. Multifocals have distinct zones for distance and near because the wearer’s eyes can no longer adjust on their own, typically due to age-related changes. The Energys lens is still classified as a single-vision lens. The +0.30 diopter addition is subtle enough that it doesn’t interfere with distance clarity but meaningful enough to take the edge off sustained close-up work.
What Digital Eye Strain Actually Feels Like
Digital eye strain, sometimes called computer vision syndrome, is a cluster of symptoms rather than a single condition. The most common complaints are eye fatigue, dryness, and blurred vision, especially toward the end of the day. Some people also notice headaches, neck tension, or difficulty refocusing when they look up from a screen. The underlying cause is partly muscular: your focusing system locks into a near-point position for hours and eventually fatigues, similar to how holding a weight at arm’s length gets harder the longer you do it.
Dryness compounds the problem. When you concentrate on a screen, your blink rate drops significantly, sometimes by half. Fewer blinks means less tear film spread across the eye, and contact lens wearers feel that more acutely than people who don’t wear lenses. So the Energys lens tackles both sides of the issue: the optical design addresses focusing fatigue, and the lens material addresses moisture loss.
The Material and Moisture System
Biofinity Energys are made from comfilcon A, a silicone hydrogel with 48% water content. The material uses what CooperVision calls Aquaform technology, which is essentially a network of water-attracting molecular structures woven throughout the lens. These structures form hydrogen bonds with water molecules, locking moisture into the lens from its core to its surface. The lens holds roughly twice its weight in water without relying on surface coatings or added wetting agents that can wear off during the day.
Oxygen transmissibility is rated at 171 Dk/t (measured at a common prescription strength of -3.00D). That’s a high number. For context, the minimum recommended for safe overnight wear is around 87 Dk/t, so even though these are approved for daily wear, the material lets plenty of oxygen through to the cornea during a long day. More oxygen reaching the eye generally means less redness and irritation.
The material also has what CooperVision describes as an optimized modulus, meaning the lens is engineered to be soft and flexible rather than rigid. A lower-modulus lens tends to conform more naturally to the shape of your eye, which translates to better initial comfort and less awareness that you’re wearing a lens at all.
Who These Lenses Are Designed For
The target wearer is someone with a standard single-vision prescription (nearsighted or farsighted, without the need for multifocal correction) who spends a significant portion of their day on digital devices. That covers a wide range of people: office workers, students, designers, gamers, or anyone whose daily routine involves several consecutive hours of screen time.
These lenses are not designed for presbyopia, the age-related loss of near focusing ability that typically begins in your early to mid-40s. If you already need reading glasses or multifocal contacts, the +0.30 diopter boost in the Energys lens won’t be enough to replace that correction. They’re designed for younger eyes that can still focus up close but get fatigued doing it all day.
CooperVision positions these as the first contact lenses to combine an aspheric digital-strain design with a high-oxygen silicone hydrogel material. Other brands offer “anti-fatigue” or “relax” lens designs, but the specific combination of the DigitalBoost optics and the Aquaform moisture system is unique to the Energys line.
What the Clinical Testing Shows
CooperVision tested the Energys lens against a standard Biofinity sphere lens and measured something called accommodative microfluctuations, which are tiny, rapid changes in your focusing effort. When your ciliary muscle is fatigued or struggling, these fluctuations increase. After 20 minutes of reading on a smartphone held at about 10 inches (25 cm), wearers using the Energys lens showed a statistically significant reduction in these fluctuations compared to those using the standard lens. In practical terms, the focusing system was working more steadily and with less strain.
Independent research evaluating anti-fatigue contact lenses in heavy screen users has also found improvements in the core symptoms of digital eye strain: less reported fatigue, reduced dryness, and clearer vision during prolonged screen use. The effect isn’t dramatic in the way switching from glasses to contacts might feel dramatic. It’s more of a cumulative difference, the kind you notice at 5 PM when your eyes don’t feel as heavy as they used to.
Wearing Schedule and Care
Biofinity Energys are monthly replacement lenses. You wear a single pair for up to 30 days (removing them each night) before opening a fresh pair. They require the same cleaning and storage routine as any monthly soft lens: rinse with multipurpose solution after removal, store in a clean case with fresh solution, and replace the case regularly.
If you’re currently wearing standard Biofinity lenses and want to try the Energys version, the transition is straightforward because the base material is the same. Your prescription parameters may carry over directly, though your eye care provider will confirm the fit since the optical profile of the lens is slightly different.
Limitations Worth Knowing
No contact lens eliminates digital eye strain entirely. Screen fatigue is driven by a combination of factors: sustained near focus, reduced blinking, screen glare, poor lighting, and posture. The Energys lens addresses the focusing and dryness components but can’t fix a poorly lit workstation or a monitor set at the wrong height. The 20-20-20 rule (looking at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes) still matters, even with these lenses.
The +0.30 diopter boost is a fixed value. It’s not adjustable, and it won’t increase over time as your eyes change. For some heavy screen users, the boost provides noticeable relief. For others, particularly those whose strain is driven more by dryness or environmental factors than by focusing effort, the improvement may be modest. The lens works best for people whose primary complaint is that their eyes feel tired and strained after prolonged close-up work, rather than those dealing mainly with dry-eye symptoms from other causes.