I've been wearing glasses since I was 15 (found out I needed them when I failed the eye exam for my driving learner's permit) and long thought about LASIK. A few years ago I switched to contacts and since then the desire for surgery is gone. Contacts are comfortable, I can stop any time they become a problem, and only take up a minute of my day to put in and take out. And as my eyes change, my prescription can change, so they're a bit more future proof.
Now, I don't mean to criticize people who choose LASIK at all. It's a deeply personal choice, and what's right for me may not be what's right for you. I just wanted to share this because I had previously overestimated the hassle of contacts and I'm glad I gave them a try.
I researched LASIK heavily before deciding not to proceed. A few things that fed into my decision:
(1) 1% have serious complications, and another couple percent say they would've abstained if they could go back in time. Basically, ~3% of people were unhappy with LASIK. That means that you'll see a lot of echo-chamber about how it's amazing (the 97%), but 3% is not negligible.
(2) By the time you're 45 y/o, you're going to get presbyopia -- ie. you will require bifocals because your eyes lose the ability to accommodate. You'll need some form of correction in the future.
(3) Most of the lifestyle improvements were relatively minor compared to donning & doffing soft lenses once in the morning and once at night.
(4) You cannot wear soft contact lenses anymore after LASIK. If you need contact lenses in the future, they'll have to be rigid (eg. gas-permeable). Those suck. It also means you may not be able to take advantage of advances in soft contact lens technology, such as the glucose-sensing lens and the "autofocus" lens. [1]
For your first point: the relative risk factors vary significantly with age.
For a young person deciding between LASIK and contacts the chance of a significant problem due to the surgery is actually lower than the chance of one due to contacts (accidents putting them in and taking them out, contamination causing eye damage or infection, ...) over the next few decades.
For me at 37 that balance is probably the other way (caveat: I've not researched this, I'm just assuming), and there aren't many years before I'd need some form of extra correction even if I did have LASIK now. This plus your other points are pretty much why I'm still on the fence about my own eyes despite finding glasses and contacts inconvenient in different ways at different times (and likely to stick with contacts).
When you say that the risk with LASIK is lower than for contacts for younger people, does that take into account different habits? My guess (and this is totally a guess, barely informed) would be that the statement is true for the general population, but that it is not true if you actually do everything properly and consistently.
There are a frightening number of people out there who don't wash their hands before they insert or remove their lenses, or sleep with them in, or never get new ones. I'd wager that problems are greatly concentrated among those people, and that if you actually take them out every night, wash your hands thoroughly before you manipulate them, and throw them away at the appointed date, the chances of problems go way down.
For a common example of this at work, if you look up the statistics for the effectiveness of condoms, they look like they barely work at all. Then if you look up the statistics for people who actually use them properly (which includes such subtle things as actually using one every time instead of occasionally just doing without) they get a lot better.
IIRC the study I'm quoting (from memory, I can't find a link to it right now to verify unfortunately) they were considering everybody so yes, for people doing things right all the time the risk would be lower and those not (possibly lower than the LASIK risk).
It was only looking at people using daily lenses (the variety that I use) so things might be worse for monthly or "permanent" lenses depending on what you clean them with.
Some of the risk considered was manufacturing defects and so forth, so not all the risk considered was human error on the part of the user.
I imagine controlling for human error is hard, because people will lie to you.
I also imagine that patient error is a factor in LASIK risk too, because there's post-surgery care you need to follow, and if you don't do it right you probably increase your risk.
So in both cases, you should look at the risk with an eye (heh) towards your ability to do things properly, and try to be honest with yourself about your willpower in that respect.
The autofocus lens looks really interesting. One of the things I'm worried about is what I'll have to do once I get older and my lens starts to lose flexibility. Is there any more you can share about them, like how they work or how likely it is that they'll be available as a real product in a decade or two?
As someone who had contacts and got LASIK later on, I would still highly recommend considering it. For me, the deciding factors included 1) hassle of putting on contacts, 2) ability to lose them when swimming and 3) lack of access to new contacts when traveling or outdoors.
I've since found that my contact prescriptions were, apparently, never that great, since after getting LASIK my vision feels noticeably better. The first few days it felt like switching from 1080p to 4k, it was that significant. I think it might have to do with how LASIK is done nowadays, where they make a topographical map of your eye and adjust the curvature with extreme precision. You just can't get that with contacts.
Anyways, it's been 2+ years for me too and I can truly say it was one of the better life-changing decisions I've made.
LASIK patient here too, 8 years ago then at age 29, about 90% satisfied. Yes, it is life-changing, especially for one such as me who couldn't tolerate contacts. I played noticeably better in pickup sports games now that I could move freely without always subtly adjusting to balance the glasses. My one problem is persistent dryness, which is manageable with eyedrops but does require keeping that with me.
My one particular miracle moment: stepping out of the shower, onto the scale, and holy crap I can see the dial without squinting or bending! The other great convenience is lying sideways on a couch watching TV without glasses digging into your pillow.
That 4k vision is great but it's not permanent. Lasik doesn't stop your eyes from changing, so it's now as if I'm wearing a contact prescription that's 8 years out of date. It's still perfectly fine for driving and should stay so for several more years, but I do have trouble now with things like reading signs from far across a train station. It's normal to need a Lasik redo or lenses again after 10-20 years.
I have a feeling that your point #2 is key, and there's going to be a strong dividing line between people who swim a lot, and people who don't. I hardly ever go swimming so that doesn't bother me at all.
I don't know about #1 or #3 though. The hassle is literally 30 seconds in the morning and 30 seconds in the evening. It takes me more time to brush my teeth. If I travel for an extended period I just pack an extra pair or two.
You should never put water on contact lenses as water is a strong vector of bacterial infection. I'm glad you haven't lost your eyesight (probably because the contacts fell while swimming with those).
As a contrast to @mikeash's experience, I'd love to use contacts, but can't really wear them. My astigmatism is ... epic. Astigmatism with soft contacts means toric lenses, which have a few annoying "quirks". First, they never quite fully correct most astigmatism because the corrections are quantized in a way that makes it difficult to get a bang-on correction. Second, they lose acuity if the wearer's head is tilted. Both of these flaws relate to how toric lenses work: they're weighted to maintain their orientation. They're only in correct position when your head is straight up-and-down. Tilt your head a bit and they start to float off line. The worse your astigmatism, the more annoying these deviations become. As such, when I'm in for an eye exam no one recommends soft lenses for me anymore.
That leaves modern rigid gas permeable (RGP) lenses. I don't mind the feel of wearing these, and the vision is excellent. They don't need weighting for correct orientation, which eliminates the aforementioned limitations of soft lenses. The visual acuity for my correction is in all ways superior to soft lenses I've tried. The central vision nearly rivals good glasses, and the sharp peripheral vision blows glasses out of the water. But even with the newest, most permeable lens materials my eyes can't really ramp up to tolerating them for a full day's wear. And there's the rub, since RGPs require a ramp up to acclimate to wearing them, they aren't really amenable to just popping them in "weekend warrior" style.
I haven't taken the LASIK plunge yet, but the above might illuminate why it's an appealing option for some people.
I developed an allergy to contacts during college. After wearing them for more than 15 minutes, my eyes would swell up. I was on a sports team and didn't want to negatively affect my performance with eye wear. So I got the lasik. I had a hell of a problem with dry eyes for years, obviously not helped by spending 10 hours a day in front of a CRT monitor. Finally I got diagnosed with Blepharitis, which is an inflammation of the eyelids caused by tear duct blockage. I treat it with a warm compress every morning and get by all right. I often wonder if the lasik caused the Blepharitis, the contacts caused it, or I had it and the contacts irritated it.
I haven't tried dailies, but regardless I'd definitely recommend experimenting with different contacts if you're unsatisfied in any way. For the first couple of years, I did well, but they were never 100% comfortable. I still thought it was the best choice, but there was always a bit of annoyance. Then my doctor switched me to a different brand and the difference was amazing. Now the only way I can tell whether I have the things in or not is by looking in the distance to see if stuff is clear.
They're definitely not all the same, so experiment until you find something that's great.
I've been wearing glasses since I was 8, got contacts when I was 13 and have been thinking about getting LASIK since it first became popular ~10 years ago. I have gone from wanting it really badly to now not wanting it all.
In high school and college, I wore contacts all the time because it improved my confidence. As I got older, I found myself wearing glasses all the time and contacts at the gym/social events, etc. As a side note, wearing contacts stabilizes your vision - your Rx will not change as quickly because of the short focal distance. This is a nice benefit because we spend so much time looking at screens nowadays.
Actually there is no evidence that contacts affect myopia progression. I had bifocals for many years as a teen under the same impression, but this has also been disproven. It is likely that any slow-down that you had in myopia progression was caused by your eye-ball size stabilizing.
Realizing that the benefits outweigh the costs (health and financial). In my case, the benefits would be avoiding the annoyances of glasses/contacts (cleaning them, reshaping the frames when they get bent, moisture, buying new ones) but given that the surgery might not result perfect vision or even cause new problems (halos, night vision, having to redo the surgery after ~10 years) it's not worth it. Plus, I'm less vain and more frugal now.
Now, I don't mean to criticize people who choose LASIK at all. It's a deeply personal choice, and what's right for me may not be what's right for you. I just wanted to share this because I had previously overestimated the hassle of contacts and I'm glad I gave them a try.