Hello! I’m RyanF9 and today we crash test a cheap sport helmet – the Icon Airmada.
Alright so maybe “cheap” is a bit harsh. In reality this is Icon’s middle-of-the-road bucket. It looks down on the Icon Alliance, and looks up to the Icon Airframe. But our Airmada still only costs a couple hundred bucks and that makes it cheap in the bigger picture of things. Last time we torture tested a bazillion-dollar Shoei and it scored 66%... I wonder how our budget beauty will do in comparison?
Ahh shit – SeaWorld. I don’t expect the waterproofing test to go well. Polite reviewers often say that the Airmada is breezy. But one filled with less bullshit would just call it leaky. All the rear exhausts are stuck open and Icon relies on a peg and a hole to cinch the visor tight to its rubber flange. That works about as well as you’d expect, not to mention that the peg doesn’t precisely fit the hole, leaving yet another gap for water to find.
Screw it!
So that was fun. Lots of ice-cold water leaked through the visor of this helmet, more through the back… I don’t normally take pleasure in handing out failing grades but... fuck you Airmada.
Now for soundproofing, we have a fan to provide wind noise and the sweet melodies of Whitney Houston to approximate road noise. Our Decibel meter peaked at XYZdB out in the open, let’s see how it does inside the Airmada.
So we peaked at 99Dbs, which is a 5% reduction in volume and that is not good enough. Failing grade for soundproofing.
Now I still haven’t forgiven the Airmada for getting me wet, so we’re going to shoot it with sharp pellets at 500fps. That tends to be a good way to test puncture strength, since it always takes a few shots to penetrate right through. Anything that survives 3 or more rounds is above average and gets a passing grade.
Face shield test: We got through the face shield on the XYZ shot. That bazillion-dollar Shoei was a 4-shot shield, so that’s impressive / you get what you pay for. Time to shoot the helmet shell and see how that goes.
Shell tests: So that’s a full penetration in 5 shots. Pretty wild. This is just a basic polycarbonate shell, which is much cheaper than the fibreglass and organic fibre shell we tested on the Shoei. But the Shoei took three shots to get through and this took 5.
So, the visor failed at 4 and the shell failed at 5. Since 3 shots is the official pseudoscientific standard here at FortNine, that means we get a failing/passing grade for visor strength, and a failing/passing grade for shell penetration. Next we’re off to the batting cage to test impact protection.
Look at the damage to the side, plates, to the visor mechanism, Icon’s rapid release system, etc. Now my psychic powers tell me that the 50g sticker is going to be tripped in here – yep. See this is a long oval helmet that Icon desperately wanted to be lightweight. So essentially they took a thin-sided helmet and made it thinner. Which is not great for side protection… SHARP also flunked the Airmada in that category. Let’s see if it does better around back.
Yep. Much better. Hopefully it does equally well on top.
What do you think BryanF9? Ahhh, you think you survived with less than 50gs measured. Very good. Passing grade for top impact protection.
So, the Airmada passed 1 out of 3 impact tests, which is an overall passing / failing grade for impact protection. On to abrasion resistance then.
So, we’ve gone right through the polycarbonate to the EPS foam in 2mins 55s. That’s the best abrasion resistance we've seen – remember our Shoei Neotec lasted 1m38.
Welcome to Golf Town, where we test chin bar strength with no delicate touch. Last time the modular Neotec basically exploded on impact, but we forgot to put something in the helmet to see how much force was transferred to the face. So despite using the most precise instrument known to modern science, our test was kinda problematic. Like all of life’s problems, however, it can be solved with a cantaloupe.
The chin bar is in bad shape and our melon is in destroyed. Not really surprising because I’ve always noticed that the Airmada’s chin bar sits really close to the face. It’s a good tight race fit, but I’ve always wondered if having your face so close to the chin bar is a potential safety hazard. Turns out, the answer is yes.
So, that’s a failing grade for chin bar strength. Which means we’ve come to the 8th test – a long-time favourite of pyromaniacs – heat resistance.
Burn Test: Polycarbonate shell, vent cowls, face shield, rubber O-ring, face shield, HyrdraDry liner, okay, time to cheat, I know for a fact that the EPS foam in here is flammable and goodie goodie, we’ve already ground through to it from the abrasion test... ah yeah there we go...
Sit-rep! The Airmada was easy to burn. It’s a polycarbonate bucket, which is a type of plastic, and most plastics ignite easily. Of course a blow torch isn’t the most common road hazard for motorcyclists, mind you. Nonetheless, failing grade for heat resistance which brings us to FortNine’s ninth test – build quality.
So, what still works on here? Face shield (I guess the nice thing about making a visor lock from a peg and a hole is that there’s not much that can go wrong), side plates, rapid release system, vents, plastic ring, interior, etc.
All in all, I’m surprised that so much of this helmet is still working. We weren’t very kind to the Airmada today but it held itself together admirably. Nice work Icon – passing grade for build quality.
And that means we have 5 failures today – waterproofing, soundproofing, impact protection, abrasion resistance, and build quality. That gives a total score of 4/9, about 20% less than the Shoei Neotec, which is not bad considering that the Neotec is three times more expensive. Looks like price-tags and safety levels are not directly related.
Speaking of price-tags, next week we’re testing one of the most expensive, most technical racing boots on the market – Sidi’s Vertigo. Until then, thank you very much for watching, take care!