I have seen too many Suomy helmets with damage to the rear plastic pieces. There is no way I would buy one when I think about it. They are really fragile in that area and you see them on Ebay being sold be dealers who are trying to sell them with damages plastic pieces. I'll pass based on that alone. I don't want to have to baby a helmet that much.
What's next? Well I looked at the HJC's and have been eyeing the carbon fiber models. The full carbon fiber exterior is just a little too much "look at me I'm overboard with the carbon fiber" attitude. They did just come out with a new model called the FS-15 that is very affordable. A few reputable review sites also did claim that the HJC was VERY high quality stuff so I have been looking into it further. The their carbon fiber models are supposed to be the lightest helmet you can get and a friend of mine uses one a lot and likes it very much. I really like the HJC CF (carbon fiber) model that has white painted objects on it as well. They only make this color scheme on the CF in the AC-12 model and it's called the Carbon Vader Helmet. The price gets up towards $400 on that model so I'll just keep that a nice thought for now. I tried on a couple HCJ and the padding was a little rougher than I expected. When putting on the helmet a few times during a day I prefer the smoothest and softest (within reason) material I can get in a helmet. I've been spoiled with the Arai RX-7! When I get some more energy I'll post a picture or two of the CF model helmet that I like.
I'm pretty shocked at how low priced the HJC line is and the quality is right up there as well. If the material was a little more nice to my face I would have picked one up while I was there at Momentum Motorsports shop. And then I saw another helmet that I was curious about...
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