Laser surgery to correct vision does involve risk & has its cons, but for me the pros far outweighed the hassle I experienced with glasses & contacts. I switched from glasses to contacts a looooong time ago since I was active in sports & glasses were a huge hindrance. Everyone is different & my contact lens experience dates back to well before GP lenses were available. In fact, soft contact lenses were relatively new at the time.
Anyhow, I always had red eyes when wearing soft contacts & they were never what I consider comfortable in my eyes. Some days were better than others, but overall, I put up with the irritation to make my participation in sporting activities less of a hassle. I also recall forgetting to keep my eyes closed one time as I dived into a swimming pool and guess what happened.... one of the contacts was washed out & I was knackered since it happened far from home in Arizona. Not a big deal these days since replacement contacts are fairly inexpensive, but back in the '80s, that was not the case. You generally had to order them through your optometrist & wait. No buying off the shelf like today.
It's been quite a few years now that I had the lasik done. The thing that convinced me to go for it was that the son of a friend who was renting a room in my condo had the procedure done. IME it's been some of the best money I've spent. If you're concerned about the risk, you can have one eye done to see how it goes. I threw caution to the wind & had both done straight away. Took all of 15 or 20 minutes & I was blown away when I took the patches off the next day & had better than 20-20 vision. One drawback worth mentioning is that it didn't take long for me to require glasses for reading, but I was well informed before the procedure that this may happen. It depends on your age. I was already getting close to the time where I would need reading glasses anyway, so no biggie for me. Happens to most of us at a certain age regardless.
First thing is a consultation & that won't cost you a thing. They will determine if you are even a candidate and provide you with all the pros, cons, risks etc. so that you can make an informed decision to proceed or not.
I actually still have a copy of the info sheet they gave me. Here's a link, MS Word stored on OneDrive. This is from some time in the mid '90's. Safe to assume there have been some advancements in the procedure since then.
http://1drv.ms/1PVTGVw
So yeah, sorry I don't have any info for you on GP contacts having never tried them. Nowadays it's probably not a huge investment to give contacts a try. Your eye practitioner will advise you much better than anyone on a fish forum! Time spent on a laser surgery consultation will also be a worthwhile investment, should be free.