by Mark
Shark Vision-R 'Pixy'
I’ve had this Shark VisionR helmet for a while now and I’ve wrote and re-wrote this review many times.
That should speak volumes about it but I’d be doing the helmet an injustice if I left it like that.
You see, the Shark VisionR is an incredibly well thought out helmet…inside at least.
The idea behind the lid, as you might have guessed from the name, is that the helmet offers the “the panoramic aperture of an open-face helmet, with the ‘widest-angle’ currently on the market”. In non-marketing speak that means the visor is big and you can see more out of the helmet.
And it’s true; you can see more out of the helmet. I wouldn’t say you’ve got the same field of vision as an open face helmet, but you’ve certainly more than others I’ve used or tried, and it’s your peripheral vision that seems to benefit the most. Although looking down at the dials also seems to be easier in the Shark, there’s less head movement.
Also this helmet is cool, it’s fresh. No i’m not trying to be ‘down-with-the-kids’. I mean it’s cool, it’s the only helmet I’ve ridden with that I’ve closed the vents as there was so much air coming in.
On the outside of the helmet, at the top, you’ve got two air ‘scoops’ that remind me of the scoops you’d find on a Sabura Impreza. And boy do they work. You want air on your head? A simple nod and you’re engulfed, seemingly gallons of air poor in and swirl round your noggin.
Now, this might not be for everyone, but I thought it was fantastic. It’s not a constant thing, you have to make a conscious decision to angle your head slightly from your normal riding position. But it will be great in the summer!
On the left-hand side of the helmet you have an additional control, a small lever, this brings down, or raises, the sun-visor.
That’s right, a built in sun visor. I had mixed emotions about this, at first I thought it was a bit naff, the sort of thing you’d find a 70-year old Harley rider requesting.
It didn’t take me long however before I thought that it’s actually a really good idea. It’s massively unobtrusive, when it’s raised it completely vanishes into the upper of the helmet.
No longer will I get caught out when there’s a sudden, random bout of sunshine and I’m not wearing my sunglasses, or when I am wearing them and the sun goes in and I can barely see. Or those times when I change my visor for my tinted one (road legal of course officer) and then stay out that little too long!
In any of those cases, I simply raise, or lower the visor accordingly. The sun-visor is also removable though, at the time of writing, we couldn’t find any replacement ones.
So this is all sounding good right? No issues? Well; as I said at the beginning, the helmet is incredibly well thought out on the inside. Not only do you have the above, but you also have an auto-seal system. This forces the visor back when you lower it offering better soundproofing and less draft. You get a removable anti-fog mask built in as well as an ‘easy-fit’ system for people who wear glasses. This allows you to put the arms of your glasses down either side of the padding to keep them firmly in place.
But that is still all on the inside, and it is when you come to the outside that the helmet starts to let you down.
You see; motorcycle riders wear gloves, we do, it’s not a fashion statement, it’s practicality, and sometimes, in fact very often, those gloves are big and heavy. The problem with wearing gloves is that it makes adjusting or touching or using small fiddly things next-to impossible.
So Shark, why-o-why did you make the outside of the helmet so glove unfriendly?
On top of the helmet you have two ‘buttons’. These are ‘rocker’ type buttons that you need to press down ‘into’ the helmet. Push the front of the button into the helmet and you close the vent, push the back part into the helmet and you open it.
But they are so small; they must be around one millimetre wide and about two centimetres in length. You can only really use them properly with your finger nails. Even if you could push them in with your gloves on they hardly stick up to register so finding them is next-to impossible.
The chin vent is also glove unfriendly for different reasons. It’s built into the front of the helmet, for aesthetic reasons presumably, but this can make finding it whilst riding down the motorway quite difficult. There’s no ‘catch’ or ‘lever’ or ‘sticky-out-bit’ like there is on say a Shoei XR1000.
What this means is that you have to ‘predict’ what vents you’d like open and what you wouldn’t which is just silly. You make you’ll have one of the top one’s open and one closed. But, honestly, there’s so much air that can come in that if it’s just on one side of your head it can feel like you’re having a stroke!
The Shark VisionR retails for around £250 so isn’t the cheapest lid available. I would love to tell you to run out and buy one I really would. But I just can’t make my mind up if the glove-unfriendly outside would put me off enough for what is, on the inside at least, a brilliantly well thought-out piece of headgear.
I’m going to persevere with it, part of me is hoping I’ll get used to it, or have a ‘light bulb’ moment when I realise how to open and close the vents whilst travelling at speed and wearing gloves. Realistically, I think I’m always going to be a little disappointed that the outside isn’t as well thought out as the inside.
We’d like to thank Becky @ Motocom for providing the Vision-R to test.
