At a glance High-end road helmet with best-in-class venting and sleek looks, but the price tag will turn off all but the most serious of riders
Tested by
Jon Adams, tester for The Bike List
Performance
There's an old joke that describes how to make a net - all you
do is get a load of holes and tie them together with string. I
understand I haven't delivered that particularly well, but bear
with me for a moment, because Giro's most advanced road helmet -
the Ionos - reminded me of that gag when I first looked at it. The
massive venting holes really are the most striking thing about the
design. They're 
laced together with
smarter stuff than string, of course, but the vents - all 21 of
them - define the character of this lid.
The Ionos is the top-of-the-range road-style helmet from Giro, and was first seen adorning the heads of many top riders in the 2006 Tour de France. The official model appeared on the shelves for lesser mortals in 2008, and alongside a host of colourways and team issues, there's even a Livestrong version in the distinctive black and yellow, with a proportion of the sale price going to help cancer survivors.
With its unique venting patterns, its interwoven carbon fibre and its spiky rear lattice, the Ionos looks very good, but it has to considering its price. Compared to the £10-30 you could shell out on an equally safe helmet, it's very expensive at £160, and this steep price tag will be the exit point for many. The reason some road helmets cost more than others isn't down to safety - it's down to comfort and styling. Cheaper helmets tend to be heavier, hotter, and less refined, and this makes them less pleasant to use and not so cool on the looks front. Whether they're over £100 less pleasant depends on how much and how hard you ride, and how much you want to reveal to those in the know that you wear premium kit.
Giro claims that the Ionos has the world's best venting in a road helmet and over the testing period, we found nothing to dispute this. It's incredibly cool running, and the massive vents gulp in the air and take it over and around your head whether you're in the drops or sitting up on the flats. Internal channels route the air around your noggin, and they do it incredibly well. For short periods I rode both with and without the helmet, and couldn't really distinguish feeling any hotter or cooler either way.
It handles sweat very well, too. I pushed hard to get the sweat
flowing, and though I could feel it running around my temples and
in my hair, the Ionos somehow prevents it running down your face
and lodging in your shades. It's as though the massive vents force
the sweat to evaporate, and any that can't be dealt with either
gets sent backwards or gets absorbed in the padding. On my
hour-long test rides, I couldn't actually manage to get the pads to
oversaturate, so I can't tell you where the sweat runs when this
happens! Another of our testers took the Ionos on 
a mini triathlon, and after the
swim, she managed to dry her hair on the 10-mile ride while wearing
it, so the venting really is extraordinary.
Aside from the obvious band around your skull, which is
tensioned by the intuitive Roc Loc 4 system, this helmet
effectively 'disappears' when it's on. Our Medium size weighed in
at 296g, so it's by no means a superlight helmet, but once it's on,
the design and balance make it feel lighter than it is. It's
seriously impressive at keeping you cool - so much so in fact, that
it comes with its own winter insert to keep your head warm in cold
weather. This covers everything but the rear exhaust vents with a
layer of breathable insulation. All you have to do is whip out the
seven pads that are held in place by Velcro, and then replace them
with the skull cap. It feels utterly luxurious with its 
plush lining, and is spot on for cold
days from around 5ºC down to around the freezing mark. Get
cooler than this and you'll probably want some face protection,
too, but the winter lining is dead quick to remove if it doesn't
leave enough room for your balaclava. If you need a spare liner,
you can get one for £10.
A second full set of the standard pads is supplied with the
helmet, and these are simple to remove and fit. The fact that
there's seven of them makes fitting a little fiddly, but it's not
difficult and they're superbly positioned in just the right places
around the inner structure, making the Ionos very comfortable. The
X-Static fabric in the pads is odour-killing and anti-microbial,
and if yours get too grubby for your tastes, you can bung them in
the wash - just make sure you have one of those mesh bags to put
them in as some 
are quite small. If you lose any, a
replacement set can be bought for the same price as the winter
liner.
With the Ionos being a road lid, there's no visor for shielding your eyes from the elements, but the brow section extends out just far enough to give sufficient protection when you're in an aero tuck. Personally, I quite like visors for road riding, as they deflect rain and bugs, keep the sun off and save your eyes from drivers who don't dip their lights at night. Despite the existence of hinged visors, which can be quickly positioned to avoid visibility problems when riding in the drops, the current fashion is for road lids not to have them though, so you'll have to make do with a peaked cap underneath if you want more than the Ionos offers to keep the elements off your face.
As with all Giro's helmets, there's a three-year
crash replacement policy, and this currently will get you a brand
new Ionos for £90 if you take a fall (that's 60% of the RRP)
- just make sure you keep your proof of purchase.
All in all, the Ionos is an excellent road helmet that's cool to wear in every sense of the word. It's supremely comfortable (three of thebikelist's testers used it over our test period, and all of us found this to be the case) and feels strong and secure. It's very, very expensive, but if you're a serious rider and are in the market for an amazingly well-vented, high-end lid, it's one of the handful you should be trying on. Just £10 will buy you the ubiquitous EN 1078 class protection it offers, but if you want the styling and cool-running that goes with it (and you like the idea of having the same lid as Armstrong and Contador), you'll need to find £150 more (or £120 more if you shop around and can swallow last year's colours). A wonderful helmet that's wonderfully expensive!
Buy from www.wiggle.co.uk
Giro says:
Ionos is the most ventilated and technologically advanced road cycling helmet Giro has ever created. Our proprietary in-mold composite sub-frame (I.C.S.TM) provides the strength to support 21 of the largest vents ever carved into a helmet. These massive vents, coupled with an intricate network of internal channels, create a cooling system we call Wind TunnelTM ventilation, making Ionos the coolest, best-ventilated helmet available. Perfect for keeping Grand Tour champions like Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador cool on the hottest days and over the most tortuous Alpine climbs.
- Fit system - Roc Loc® 4
- Construction - In-mold - EPS liner, polycarbonate shell
- Ventilation - 21 Wind TunnelTM vents, internal channeling
- Features - In-mold composite sub frame (I.C.S.TM), X-static padding, award winning design, multiple Grand Tour championships, X-static padding
- Weight - 296g
- Meets CE EN1078 certification
- Giro crash replacement cost £90
- Sml 20-21.75in / 51-55cm, Med 21.75-23.25in / 55-59cm, Lrg 23.25-24.75in / 59-63cm
For videos and more info see: www.giro.com
Giro Crash Replacement Programme: www.madison.co.uk/giro
