Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For the money it's hard to beat. I've been using auto shade helmets for well over ten years and love them. I needed a new one as I am living in a different country to where my old one currently resides. This helmet addresses all of the problems I had with the previous one. 1) It has adjustable lower limit when dropping the helmet. So the helmet falls to the same place every time. The old one had no stop. 2) It has adjustable sensitivity. The old one was fixed and only had shade adjustment. 3) It has a grinder mode. Working outdoors with the old one the Sun was often enough to trigger the auto darkening. I can disable it on this one. 4) The helmet tightening system is better. It uses an o-ring to provide far better tension adjustment. When the helmet has a stop it's not so critical but without a stop and the adjustment slipping, it was a PITA. I never had issues with the old helmets two sensor system or it's lack of light on delay. If these are important to you I can't comment. It comes with spare protective lens covers for the outside and one for the inside. The solar feature works. I removed the batteries completely and the helmet still functions. There is a difference in the solar voltage compared to the battery voltage which affects the sensitivity. Mine is more sensitive on straight solar than with the batteries fitted. If the manufacturer added a simple Zener clamp (3.6Volt) and series diode to isolate the battery, the performance on battery and solar would be identical. The only time this is an issue is that the sensitivity and darkness scales shift due to varying voltage confusing the user. This can easily be corrected in future revisions and is not a problem if you are aware of it. The helmet is very light. It's not going to be industrial rated as it's made of thin plastic. Good for ease of use but not so good for heavy industrial applications. If your goal is to use this in the workplace you are better off with a different unit. For the exact same reason, it is not recommended to weld overhead. Any hot slag can easily melt and go through the helmet onto the user. I gave it four stars because of it's inability to be used for overhead welding. If this is not an issue to you, then it would be a five star helmet. Since I do the occasional overhead weld this means either another helmet for that or put protective barriers on the mask when doing so. It's a good enough helmet to let this go for my situation. Yours may be a deal breaker. Given the price point I would highly recommend this helmet, if you can live with the limitations. If you can't then no price is low enough.