You can spend well over �100 on a helmet, but if your budget is a little more modest than that, there are some very good ones available for much less. Met?s attractively styled Cosmo is not only pleasingly light for the money, unlike some of the other budget-priced helmets out there it?s extremely well finished too, a lot of care clearly having gone into its manufacture.
That price is even more impressive when you also consider that it?s made in Italy rather than the Far East, and that helmet manufacturing still requires a lot of skilled handworking. Although weight is only part of the equation when it comes to helmets, the Cosmo?s 268g (claimed weight is 260g) compares very well with a lot of the dearer helmets reviewed in issue 249.
Cooling is decent too, with 15 reasonably sized vents, the front four with insect mesh. This isn?t quite as impressive as the venting on pricier helmets, but making a helmet with larger vents is complicated and time-consuming, and more expensive as a result. We would have preferred the ?inmould? hard plastic shell ? the foam is ?blown? into the plastic rather than glued to it ? to cover more of the polystyrene inner section as the lower rear part is naked. The back also boasts a small reflective strip.
The Cosmo?s fit is straightforward. There?s an internal 360-degree cradle with removable padding and a large ratcheted dial which you can adjust single-handedly while riding. There?s more removable/washable padding on the inside, for your crown. And while there?s no specific vertical adjustment on the occipital cradle, our testers still found this a comfortable helmet. Its internal dimensions are 215x180mm, very slightly shorter than a lot of helmets, making it more suitable for people with rounder shaped heads.
The Cosmo comes in four colours ? black, silver, blue and red ? and two sizes, the 54-61cm we tested and 52-57cm, which is a good call for younger cyclists. It comes with a three-year warranty, but Met?s designers tell us that a well-looked-after helmet should last up to eight years.
This article was originally published in Cycling Plus magazine.
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Elsie E Belue James L Chase Evelyn G Jantz Susan L Evans Barbara M Sparks
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