Review: Helmets > Sweet Protection “Falconer 2Vi”

TLDR:

Buy Sweet Protection’s Falconer 2Vi: it’s top 6 in Virginia Tech safety scores, light as a feather, offers excellent cooling/ventilation in the summer while retaining heat through the application of magnetic covers to close the apertures for winter cycling!

Longer Review:

Intro:

If you ride ANY bicycle- a Penny-Farthing or a fully modern “safety” bicycle- long enough, you’re going to hit the deck, either due to your own error or a motorist’s; it’s inevitable. Ask any PF rider who’s cycled long enough and even the best will admit to having had a spill, or more likely several. Buying a cycle helmet is a serious decision not to be taken blithely, ESPECIALLY for those who ride highwheels. I’ve been struck at night by an elderly motorist who wasn’t wearing his glasses. Generally cycling when the roads are quiet tends to REDUCE risk, but not in this case 😉. Another time I was driven into a big pothole by an as*hole motorist travelling in the OPPOSITE direction who materially invaded my lane. That was another nice dump. Neither spills were my fault, but it doesn’t matter whose fault it is when it happens. But you CAN at least mitigate the damage by choosing a good helmet.

Sh*t happens when you road cycle- Penny-Farthings or any other bicycle. So buy a helmet like the one you’d like to be wearing when you fall, and when you do- and you will at some point– your head will be ~ 8.5′-9′ above the road surface.

Impact Protection:

The (2) factors which will determine the impact forces when you dump are speed and height.

If you ride Penny-Farthings, the latter factor- height– exponentially increases the impact forces you’ll experience over the rider of a safety bicycle, all other factors being equal.

So a helmet sufficient to protect the “safety” bicycle rider might not be sufficient to protect the life of the Penny-Farthing cyclist given the greater impact forces at dump time.

Assessing Impact Protection: Whenever I’m considering a new cycle lid, the first metric I consider is Virginia Tech scores. Anything with a less than 5 star rating is immediately excluded from further consideration. So how does VT rate Sweet Protection’s “Falconer 2Vi“?

Although its’ 5 star 8.45 5 VT score ranks it 15th overall, this is deceptive as mountain bike, e-bike and other helmet types are included. But click on the “Road” button and the “Falconer 2Vi” rises to 6th place for only cycling helmets, and there’s not much separating 5th & 6th places; .05. I’m road cycling so all the other choices are uninteresting to me. So a solid 5 star 8.45 VT score.

Cooling/ventilation:

Cooling is a key requirement in choosing a cycling helmet, indeed on par with impact protection. Grinding out miles in oppressive heat is hard enough without your gear working against you.

However, Impact Protection and Cooling are *generally* inversely correlated: when one increases, the other *usually* decreases. So the more apertures in the helmet to allow heat from your head to vent and breeze to cool you generally serves to reduce protection.

In fact, it was the lack of cooling/ventilation of my Specialized “Mode” which I bought based on the strength of it’s 4th place score in the VT rankings ~ 6 years ago that triggered the decision to buy a new helmet…

Although Specialized stated their “Mode” had special cooling capabilities, I found this claim to be unfounded: my brains boiled in their helmet on hot days irrespective of how fast I cycled. At both the 2023 Great Knutsford Race– a 3 hour race- and a 100 mile Century cycle at Longwick on 12 July 2026, my Specialized “Mode” was a nightmare. At Knutsford, sweat was pouring down my face, burning my eyes and making it difficult to see to the extent that I had to stop to rinse the salty sweat off of the helmet and my face. And at Longwick, my Specialized “Mode” was so insanely hot in the 29C temperatures that I had no choice but to swap it for a soft baseball cap; it impossible to wear that helmet. So I road cycled the last 50 miles- and some of the roads were fairly busy- wearing a baseball cap 🤦‍♂️. Despite its’ outstanding VT score, oddly my Specialized “Mode” didn’t provide me with much protection when it was sitting on a table in Longwick Village Hall 🙄. After all the problems I had with it at Knutsford, for me, Longwick was the final straw. There was now no question of continuing to cycle in the summer wearing a Specialized “Mode”.

So although VT scores are important, they cannot be read in isolation. Indeed, when you have salty sweat pouring down your faces interfering with your vision as has too frequently been my experience of the Specialized “Mode”, it will increase the chances of you having an accident and the wearer making full use of all that protection…

How Good is the “Falconer 2Vi” ‘s Cooling? In a word, EXCELLENT: The cooling is modulated by using (2) magnetic plates that can be removed in the summer to allow heat to escape and air to flow in, and replaced in the winter to retain body hear & keep the freezing air out, making this a perfect 4-season cycling helmet.

But what was the safety trade-off for the increased cooling/ventilation?: NOTHING. Let’s compare VT scores, where LOWER = BETTER (greater impact protection):

So I actually traded UP on safety while gaining better cooling by replacing my Specialized “Mode” by buying Sweet Protection’s “Falconer 2Vi“; not DOWN. To be fair to Specialized though, 6 or 7 years have elapsed and cycle helmet technology has come in leaps & bounds since my initial purchase of their “Mode”.

I’ve completed many lengthy cycles of at least 25 miles in 30C+ days during this summer of numerous heatwaves and unlike my Specialized “Mode”, I never felt that I was on the verge of passing out from heatstroke with my Falconer 2Vi.

Fit:

Compared to other cycle helmets, the Falconer 2Vi’s sizing for an average male – M/L (56-59cm) -is slightly narrow with just a 4 cm range. To reduce costs, some helmet manufacturers try to accommodate a million different sizes with an adjustable inner band. To be fair, some slack will be needed to accommodate wearing a beanie under your cycling helmet during winter cycles.

HOWEVER, although some slack is therefore required for wearing a winter beanie, an adjustable band that accommodates a 10,000 cm range of head sizes will not fit correctly anybody well if their head is swimming in it and whatever safety if purported to to offer will be materially reduced.

My hat size is 7 1/8″ / 57cm; right in the middle of the range for the Falconer 2Vi’s 56-59cm range. And it fits great with or without beanie, so full marks for a perfect fit. If your hate size is 57cm like mine, then the M/L sized version should work for you.

Weight:

Sweet Protection’s “Falconer 2Vi” is also very light: just 300g. I feel like I’m wearing nothing on my head now compared to my Specialized “Mode”.

One (potential) Negative:

It could be challenging to stick a GoPro camera mount on this helmet. Given the main reason necessitating the replacement of my Specialized “Mode” was that it was too bloody hot in summer, I’m loathe to obscure any of the apertures with a mount. Depending on the type of camera you’re trying to fit, it may or may not be possible. Although helmet cameras are more effective as they capture what you see turning your head BEFORE turning your handlebars, I guess it’s an option to mount a camera on your handle bars.

Price:

When I bought my Sweet Protection “Falconer 2Vi” it was retailing for £269, but I caught a sale at Tredz and paid £175 w/ free delivery. I just checked the price for this article and Tredz is selling it for £155 now, and listing the new suggested retail price as £219.

Final Verdict:

This is a just a great helmet: it has a significantly better VT score over the Specialized “Mode” that it’s replacing while reducing weight by 33% AND increasing ventilation. And like the Specialized “Mode”, Sweet the Falconer 2Vi’s removable magnetic covers make it a proper 4-season helmet- assuming you take care of them and not lose them. For £155 (Tredz) at the time of writing, you can avoid sweat pouring down into your eyes and baking your brains on sweltering summer cycles while in winter you can pop the covers back on to retain heat and the block the freezing winter air out.

Of the other 5 helmets *road cycling* helmets in the top 6 with the Falconer 2Vi, 4 are more expensive, and none of the other 5 Could be really considered 4-season as the cold air would sail right through these helmets. Although one of the 6 helmets- the P2R A20 MIPS– has an outstanding VT score for a value price of £55, I wouldn’t want to cycle with it in the winter. But if you’re really grunting out hard miles in the winter, with the Falconer you have the option to remove the covers and stuff them in a jersey pocket if you do need to vent heat. This helmet ticks all the boxes, and anybody that knows me will know that I’m extremely particular about my gear.