HJC IS-MAX Helmet Review

The motorcycle helmet supercedes all othe biker safety equipment combined in terms of the number of lives prolonged because of its use.

Whether you believe it should be mandated by law or left to individual choice, no one can deny that helmets save lives. For those who wear helmets, there is lively debate about what makes a quality motorcycle helmet and what doesn't. There are hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of helmets to chose from. Prices range from a few bucks all the way up to a thousand or more.

Modern motorcycle helmets are designed to absorb impact. Similar to car safety design that intentionally causes the vehicle surrounding a passenger to "desintegrate", scatterring the force of a crash to avoid energy concentrations that would prove lethal to the inhabitants, most modern helmets are designed to crack, seperate their shells and linings, absorb and scatter the force of impact to reduse trauma to the wearer's head. Thus, helmets are not to be used after a substantial impact. For this reason many riders will trash a helmet and by a new one after accidentally dropping it onto a hard surface, even though there is no visible damage.

So, in considering a new helmet, one should keep in mind that it is a safety device above all, and considerations about fashion and comfort should take a back seat. While a Roof Boxer may make you look like a radical galactic fighter pilot, there is a reason they are not DOT approved in the U.S.A. Ultimately, there are three considerations the average Joe will have when selecting a new helmet:

1. Coverage
2. Comfort
3. Price

Spending $500 to $1000 on a peice of equipment that might be useless after you accidentally drop it on the pavement or have a minor spill is probably not in tune the average biker budget. Our brains are our most important assets...nothing else works if the cranial contents aren't functioning. We don't want to cheap out on this, but we don't want to invest thousands in one-time use products over our riding careers, either.

For most, something in the $100 to $400 range seems reasonable. That range gives us a sea of variety to choose from.

These days, many riders are going with flip-face helemts (also often called "modular"). The beaty of these designs is that you don't need three different helmets to coincide with the seasons. The flip-face gives you the option of full face protection whith the ability to flip the shield and chin bar up for conversation or just to get exposure to cooler air while sitting at a traffic light.

Near the bottom of the price range for quality flip-face helmets is the HJC IS-Max. The IS-Max retails from around $179 on the web to as much as $209 in the average brick and mortar motorcycle gear store.

I bought one off the shelf at a local motorcycle shop in the Dallas area. The price tag was $204.00, but I easily talked the sales person into a ten per cent discount by showing him lower prices at nearby stores with my Motorola Droid "Shop Savvy" app. One of the coolest features about this helmet is the drop down interior sun visor that snaps back up with the push of a button on top of the helmet.

Initially I was very pleased with my IS-Max. It functioned very similarly to my Caberg Justissimo (retired after it saved my face in a Novemeber 30, 2009 crash), but as you'd expect it didn't operate quite as smooth out of the box as the Caberg did.

The chinbar flips up easily enough, and the release mechanism works equally well whether you have gloves on or not. However, when it came time to pull the chinbar back down into full helmet riding mode I found that it took so much force to do so the helmet pivoted down toward my chest so much that the visor cut the bridge of my nose a little. I quickly learned to make sure the visor was up when I tried to closed the chinbar.

There may be a way to adjust the tension for holding the chin bar up...I just haven't been bothered by it enough to go read the manual yet.

Aside from that, there's only one other con to this helmet, considering the affordable price tag: The lower back pad "wings" that secure them to the bottom back edge of the helmet won't stay in the grooves. They don't fall out, but they just don't stay completely in place, and that bugs me.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the purchase. Air flow is good, not outstanding, padding and comfort are excellent, and the internal visor with it's top exterior slide down control and instant button retraction is pure genius.

I wouldn't mind having another Caberg Justtissimo (even at twice the price) if I could find one in matte black, but untill then I am very happy to use the HJC IS-MAX as my primary lid.