Giro unveil new Aeon helmet

Tomorrow at the Tour of Flanders Giro will launch a new helmet on an unsuspecting world. The Aeon is designed to combine the ventiliation and fit of their Ionos helmet with the low weight of their Prolight model, currently the lightest CPSC certified helmet currently available. Riders from Garmin Cervelo, Rabobank and Radio Shack will be sporting the new lid as they tackle one of the toughest classics and it will be available to the public in June of this year.

The Aeon purportedly tips the scales at 189g for a size M, which is almost on a par with the Prolight. The Prolight's simple elasticated retention system was always a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it affair, depending on your head, whereas the Aeon features the latest RocLoc 5 fit system as featured on Giro's other top-end lids.

It also borrows the SL Roll Cage technology from the Ionos lid, essentially a hard thermoformed skeleton within the low-density foam that allows for big vents whilst keeping the helmet's structural integrity. It's not an idea unique to Giro but they were an early adopter, and this new incarnation of the system is a claimed 49% lighter, which along with ultra slimline webbing straps goes some way to explaining the fact that the Aeon is 100g lighter than the Ionos.

“After 25 years of continuous refinement, it isn’t easy to make significant leaps in performance without compromising features,” said Greg Shapleigh, Senior Vice President for Giro and Easton Cycling. “But we took the leading attributes of our best helmets and applied our best technologies and ideas about design, and optimized every component." Given that at first look Giro appear to have been able to cram all of the technology of a lid like the excellent Ionos into a package two-thirds the weight, the Aeon is certainly some achievent. When it hits the shelves in June there'll be eight colour schemes to choose from, including 3 limited editions: World Champion, Garmin‐Cervélo, and Rabobank. Don't expect much change out of two hundred quid though...