Helmet Shootout: W60 Truesight vs Harbor Freight Blue Flame vs HSL-100 fixed shade

[jakeru]

I just got a new Jackson W60 Truesight welding helmet, and haven't found a huge amount of real reviews on the interwebs about it, so figured I'd add my 2 cents. How better to review a helmet than compare it to others, right?

I intend to compare it against my other welding helmets, which consist of: a Harbor Freight "Blue Flame", and a really old Jackson HSL-100 with fixed shade glass lens.


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We'll start with the fixed shade unit... the Jackson HSL-100 with green glass fixed shade filter.


This HSL-100 with the glass lens weighs in at 1.28 lbs:


The headgear really sucks, and has an annoying habit of catching on hair. It feels heavy, with the large glass lens, (I'll bet plastic would lighten it up some) and I am sure that my opinion is worsened by the particularly worn out condition this one is in. It's pretty nasty. On the plus side, it's fairly cheap (about $40 or maybe less I think, would buy you a new one that is probably much nicer than this one) and has a large viewing area. The shell is pretty hard and rigid, but seems a rather clumsy shape/design to me.

How does the helmet perform? What can I say... when there is no arc struck, here's what a test viewing area looks like, compared next to what the same area looks like with no helmet on:

...as it pretty clear from the above, it simply makes whatever you are trying to see pitch black. This is *not* the hot ticket for getting your arc to start where you want it. Once you get your arc started, I suppose it's OK. It's got a quite large viewing area. I never reach for it though, because of it's bad headgear design, it's heaviness, and inability to see before the arc had started.

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... next up: the Harbor Freight "blue flame" 91214 / 67854
http://www.harborfreight.com/blue-fl...met-91214.html



This "harbor freight special" feels pretty lightweight. Weighs in at what seems to be a pretty lightweight 1.10 lbs:


On sale with coupon, it can be had for less than $40, makes it I believe the least expensive option for an autodarkening helmet out there. It does a surprisingly good job. I think it's a great value for a starter helmet.



The controls are quite simple. The sensitivity only has two adjustments (low and high) and neither is good for low amp DC TIG (or even medium-amp DC tig really... anything 50 amps or lower is problematic, would say) without pulse. A workaround is to dial in a bit of pulsing to get it to trigger; the pulsing need not be very "drastic", and it works every time. If you have a pulsing capable machine, that's pretty easy to do. But then when you're welding on the lowest of the lows that the machine can do, it might not pulse and that might make the helmet "flash" you. (Note: when this happens, an autodark still provides UV protection. It just will momentarily blind you and make you have to stop welding for a little while until the spot goes away so you can see very well again.) This helmet also has adjustable shade dial from 9-12 on the outside, which is nice and I do use it to set a lighter for for low TIG amp work, with a heavier shade for higher amp TIG work. It had a grind mode, but I don't find myself using it because the tunnel vision is just not safe IMO for grinding with this small-viewing window helmet on.

I've gotten the headgear to work quite well after fussing over it and getting it all adjusted. Due to the vertically small viewing area, it is important to get the helmet positioned just right in terms of how it sits up/down on your head. If you transition from different angles of looking up vs down (e.g., going from looking sideways to looking up) the helmet will rock on your head and require repositioning most likely to be able to see well. The back knob pushes in to turn for adjusting I never felt like I fought with; was pretty easy to adjust. Even though it's an autodark, I am used to raising it up when not welding when doing most prep work, etc. I remember sanding the tilting mechanism to give it the right amount of friction. I like it so I can make it fall down (without slamming down hard) with a "nod". Don't like it so tight that it doesn't fall down completely. Needs to fall down completely with as much friction as possible to keep it from slamming down. I think I remember the knobs tightening/loosening during helmet movements before I fussed over them. But I got them working quite well. The battery is not changeable, and this helmet relies on solar charging to keep it working right. I've never had a problem with it that taking it out of a dark corner and into the open area where light exists didn't fix. This shell is several years old.

How does it perform? The view, like almost all autodarkening helmets, is primarily green. Here is how the test viewing area looks, shown alongside the area again without any filter blocking the vision, for comparison.

This picture if you enlarge it, actually doesn't do the Blue Flame justice in terms of its clarity, I've actually thought of it as a very clear filter when the plastic covers are fresh. I think it would actually be much better if I put a fresh protective plastic covers on there. However, the photo does represent the colors that it lets though, and the diminishment of intensity in the light state.

[jakeru]

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... next up, is the Jackson W60 "Truesight" (with serpent graphics)



The truesight weighs in at 1.36 lbs, making it the heaviest of the three, although not a whole lot more than the rest (less of a difference than I was expecting)

So far the weight seems OK to me, but more time using it will tell if it's annoying.

At a cost of well over $200, it's one of the more expensive helmets out there.

The headgear knob on the back has a nice feeling rubber grip, and you just twist it. Works fine. The thing I like best about this headgear is it has a detent at the raised up position, so it should put an end to the annoying "helmet creeping down" syndrome. You know, what happens when you are welding something a bit lower than normal so you are looking down, and raising the helmet between welds, and it creeps down? The truesight protective lenses are pretty specialty part with molded rubber around the edges and a recessed area where you look though. I can't figure out why they did it that way.

Here are some additional pictures of the inside, in torch mode, and weld mode:

Note that the "welding mode" light only comes on for a few seconds, so it's not distracting. (It was actually kind of tricky to capture this photo since it was turning off so fast)

The helmet works really well in terms of sensitivity for any TIG application. It reliably triggered on the smallest pulse-free DC arc I tried, (which was 2 amps). Even if I tried to intentionally block two of the four arc sensors. And it didn't even need the max sensitivity to do so - sensitivity level of 7 did the trick, but could be adjusted up as high as 9 if desired. What I was also amazed by, was that it remained darkened just by the red glowing of hot stainless, such as after performing a weld if you get an area hot. That's not a bad thing though for welding stainless at all though, if anything it should help remind to keep the post flow triggered extra long to help keep the hot metal area from oxidizing.

It uses replaceable AAA batteries. I was surprised that it actually came with batteries. You do have to turn it on by pushing a button which activates the numbers, so I think should be an easy habit to get into. It turns itself off after 2 hours, so it's unlikely to have a problem with turning itself off inadvertently. But the blue flame (and the fixed shade, of course) were both "always on" - hard to argue with. It also has a battery life meter and a solar cell with helps power the helmet to make the batteries last longer. when the batteries go I plan to use lithium-air AAA batteries, I figure they should last longer than alkalines.

Like most helmets of this price, it has a large viewing area. The vertical viewing height is overkill, IMO. It's unnecessary to have a viewing area taller than your glasses (for those of you who wear glasses, at least, but similar overkill is probably applicable to those without glasses). It does make nice peripheral vision though, so I feel more comfortable wearing it with it down when not welding (when setting up to do a weld, for example.) With the blue flame, I never felt like I could see well with it down when not welding, so usually manually lifted it whenever I wasn't welding. I think I'd rather have the filter be a bit wider and less tall, but I understand this is a a "traditional" size and is interchangeable with some other helmets, which is neat.

What is fairly unique about the Truesight (I think this may be a feature in another high-end Jackson helmet as well, but probably only the newer ones) is that the color of the filter is not green, but more of a natural color / yellowy orangy color. That was the main reason I bought it. So far I am pretty amazed by this, and still exploring this feature. It makes for a very "different" welding experience compared to the traditional green filters. When welding stainless, there were bursts of purple and blue around the arc. When welding aluminum, there was red colors where the cathodic etching was doing its thing. These visual cues could easily help to be more aware more of what is really going on when welding, and perhaps make you a better welder if you are good at your game. Without a green filter, you get tiny hints of these things happening, but with a truesight it's like looking at a whole new word. I was almost in disbelief when it was first happening, I thought surely there must have been something wrong with my setup, however my welds were turning out good, the despite the radically different visual appearance of the puddle and area when "under the arc." I've only used it a little bit so far, but look forward to using it more and giving some more feedback after trying the new colors out.

Here is the reference picture viewed through the Truesight filter, shown next to the same viewing test area with no filter:

As you can see if you enlarge the pic of the Truesight view, it lets through a lot more colors than the traditional "green view" illustrated in the blue flame review above. It's also not all that orange or yellow, but closer to natural colors. It actually seem to have pretty close to the same viewing intensity (in the light state) as the green view, perhaps a little lighter which is good. I'd say that its larger viewing area has a big effect as well on being able to more effectively use it in the light state. (Such as for doing fit-up without flipping the helmet up, etc.)

Back regarding welding stainless with this helmet, one thing I was amazed at was how I could see the color of the oxidation with the helmet down. That is, I could see if I had the tan/brown color, the salmon pink, the purple, etc. Absolutely amazing, all these extra colors in the view it provides. The green lens never lets me see any of that. I only remember being able to see any of that faint oxidation film coloration after flipping it up.

[jakeru]

For easier comparison of the different colors, here are a side-by-side view of the the Blue Flame's "traditional green" view and the Truesight's "amber band pass" view:


I'm not sure if I can figure out how to take arc shots through both for actual "under the arc" comparisons, but if I can I'll post them up in this thread. But the colors under the arc between these two filters seem to differ as radically as they do in the light state.

Edit: It's worth mentioning some minor downsides I noticed in my initial experience with the Truesight helmet. Due to its price, one would expect for such details to be perfect. One, the headgear wasn't assembled (or had come loose) to the helmet in one spot. The pieces were loose and even came out of the box (luckily I got them all accounted for). Two, there is plastic casting flash in various places in both some of the the headgear plastic pieces (feel "sharp" on some places) as well as on the helmet shell itself, such as where the lens gasket seals to the helmet shell. I can cut, file, or trim them down if they do bother me though. Three, I've seen some misleading information that this product is made in the USA, which I believe Jackson may be responsible for. However the inside of the actual helmet shell reads "made in Taiwan" cast right into the plastic.

[everlastsupport]

Hey Jake,

Somewhere on the web there was a fellow that had a mount with a helmet and camera behind it he used to film welding video. I'll look later for it. He used another helmet to do the actual welding. I was surprised to see how well it worked. Wasn't Jody level, but I recall it was pretty darn good.

BTW, thanks for the review.

[Rambozo]

Did you lock the camera settings for exposure and white balance for your pictures?

[jakeru]

Did you lock the camera settings for exposure and white balance for your pictures?

What I did to take those through-the-lens pictures was first depress the shutter button halfway without the lens, then introduce the lens while keeping the shutter button halfway depressed, and then fully depressing the shutter button to record the view through the lens. I had the camera (a Canon ELPH 300HS) set to auto ISO, White Balance, and iContrast. What I don't know is which of those auto settings are set when button is halfway pressed, versus which need full depression to be set. (I know for certain the focus is set with halfway, but not sure about behavior of the other settings.)

I just checked out the shooting settings in the image metadata, and it does look like it recorded the pictures with different ISO speeds:
* ISO 1000(Auto) for the HSL-100 and the blue flame shots
* ISO 800(Auto) for the Truesight shot
* ISO 1600(Auto) for the no lens shot

All other shooting settings in the image metadata were the same (including exposure compensation = 0). Other camera settings used were "scene-based light metering", and of course, no flash. I suppose I could try re-doing with the ISO manually set to something. (Any suggestions what to set it to?) I was thinking that a tripod might help a great deal. I've got a small one I was thinking I could set up. Using a tripod would capture the exact same viewpoint as well.

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Update - just checked into the Auto ISO behavior in my camera's manual, and it appears to be set based on the half-depressed shutter position. I just verified it on the camera, indeed the automatically selected ISO speed gets displayed on the screen immediately after depressing the shutter button halfway. So, I don't know why it didn't automatically select the same ISO speed for all the shots. Maybe because I aimed them slightly differently. I did crop out the same regions taken for the uploaded pics, to better facilitate the side-by-side comparison.

[sportbike]

Cool, thanks for the review. I am thinking about getting a larger lens auto dark helmet to replace / supplement my "Blue flame" as well.