For the first time in a long time, I have two brand new lids. One was a planned replacement of my 5 year old Shoei GT Air, and one was a purely spontaneous purchase because, well, tentacles.
Introducing the Icon Airflite Inky!
General fit
I’ve been commuting with this lid for about a week now. My regular Shoei size (S) fit perfectly, and I’ve never been so glad that my head is a longish oval – the Airflite is not the lid for those of you with round noggins. If my head were even slightly more on the round side, I’d have needed to try swapping out cheek pads to get a better fit. Adding the new Cardo Packtalk Bold with JBL speakers was a breeze, and the Cardo unit doesn’t seem to add much drag on the lid.
Ergonomics
If that’s really the right word. The face shield is really glove-friendly, thanks to a easy-to-grab lip on the lower chin. The face shield is kind of a weird Hannibal Lecter style, with the shield covering the chin bar’s air intake, but that’s also what makes it glove-friendly. The face shield doesn’t have particular open settings – it seems to just stay put at any height you crack it open to. The drop down internal sun visor (it blue!) is just a bit fiddly to operate with gloves. To deploy the visor, you need to press in and then up. It’s taken a bit to get used to, and on one particularly sunny ride home, I just couldn’t get it so it was a really squinty ride home. One last note on field of vision – it’s pretty huge, more like what you’d get in an offroad lid compared to my touring lid.
Airflow
Inky is definitely my new favorite summer run-around-town lid. The massive chinbar intake and the exhaust ports on top flow all the air. All of it. I’m actually looking forward to the hot Portland summer now, thinking I won’t be as much of a sweaty mess after a ride. Add in the anti-fog coating on both the faceshield and the internal visor and you’ve got it made. All that airflow comes with a price though – the lid is noisy! If I were planning a lot of highway miles, I’d probably be reaching for my touring lid because it’s a lot quieter and a lot less fatiguing.
Looks
Not gonna lie, this lid is a LOT of look. So much look that it’s not usually my thing. But again, tentacles! And high-vis blue metallic. Oh yeah, and fishies. Winner all around. Bonus points – one of the younger folks I work with saw it on my desk and pointed out HOW COOL it was.
Niggles
I just have a couple, one being the fiddly internal sun visor deployment mechanism. I suspect I’ll get used to that before too long. My other big niggle – that internal visor is just a little short. If it were even a couple of millimeters longer, it’d offer better light coverage, particularly on morning commutes when the sun’s just coming over the horizon.