Motorcycle Helmet Review: Jarrow Mono X2

I purchased a Jarrow Mono X2 flip up helmet a few months ago and have been using it daily since then. Here are my impressions of this helmet.

This is a flipup helmet which means that normally you ride around with the front portion of the helmet down and it looks like a regular full face helmet. When you are stopped however you can push up the front of the helmet to talk to people, take your glasses off, etc.. It's easy to operate the flipup feature with one hand. There is a single button in front to unlatch. I've never had a flip up helmet before and while I like this feature, I don't really consider it a critical one for me. Occasionally it comes in handy when you need to talk to someone but don't want to get off your bike (e.g. parking lot attendant, toll booth worker). I could live without it though.

One concern that you hear people discuss with flipup helmets is the structural integrity in face-forward crashes. The concern is that the helmet could flipup during a crash and expose your lower face to serious damage. I'm not an expert, but this certainly seems like a possibility with this helmet. The helmet latches are just thin pieces of metal and I could see them coming loose on impact.

Another safety concern I have about this helmet is that it seems a bit flimsy. You can move the front/flipup piece laterally quite a bit with your hand and the overall shell construction seems pretty light compared to my traditional non-flipup Shoei helmets. I don't know if all flipup helmets are like this, or if this is a cheap one.

The helmet is also convertible, with some tools, to a three quarter helmet. It's pretty straightforward to do, but I've never ridden around with the helmet in this configuration, so I can't comment on how it performs in this manner.

One novel feature of the helmet and the main reason I purchased it is a drop down sun visor incorporated into the helmet itself. Similar to what you see on military pilot helmets. This is a very handy feature for commuting. I flip the visor down when riding in the sun, flip it back up when I roll into the parking garage, etc.. It's very easy to operate with one hand. Unfortunately, the optical quality of this visor seems pretty low. When looking through it, things seem darker, but I lose a lot of resolution. Also the "darker" is not dark enough. In bright sunlight, I have to wear sunglasses underneath the visor. That's exactly what I was trying to avoid with this purchase - oh well.

Another annoying thing about the sun visor and the main visor as well is that it is awkward to clean them while on the helmet and hard to remove from the helmet for cleaning. You have to use some tools to disassemble the helmet for removal. It's not too bad for the main visor, but the internal visor is harder to get off.

I wear earplugs when I ride, but there is still quite a bit of wind noise generated by the helmet. This is not surprising, given the non-aerodynamic shape. It's not unlivable for my short commute, but I would find the noise level pretty untolerable on a long ride. There is also quite a bit of windflow inside the helmet even with all the vents closed. The air swirls around your face and sometimes irritates my eyes when I'm wearing contacts. To be fair, there was a windblocker chin piece that came with the helmet. I did not install this because it made the helmet inconvenient to get on/off and it looked like it would come off while I was riding down the road.

I am sorry to say that I would not recommend this helmet to anyone. I love the flip down sun visor, but the flimsy construction, wind noise, and inadequate optical qualities of the visor made this helmet not work for me.