One visor to rule them all, that’s the dream of many motorcyclists that enjoy tinted visors during the day, but want an easy “clear” option for night-time riding.
Until recently, if you wanted to protect your eyes from the sun, most helmet systems required you to have two shields: one clear – for night-time riding, and one tinted – for daytime use.
Not always a convenient or practical solution, we have seen riders resort to wearing sunglasses behind clear visors; or worse, wearing tinted visors at night.
Thankfully, some solutions have emerged from the motorcycle helmet industry, namely transitional visors (as seen from Bell Helmets), which change tint based on the ambient light.
Another technology is electrochromatics, which tints the glass or plastic by applying an electrical current (actually, the electricity makes the cells clear in most use-cases). Helmet startup Skully features this technology on its now vaporware AR-1 helmet design.
Add respected helmet manufacturer AGV to the mix now, as the Italian company debuted its LCD-based AGVisor system in Switzerland last week, though with little fanfare.
From what we can glean, the AGVisor system will work on the AGV Pista, Corsa, and GT Veloce helmets (all of which use the same visor design), in a similar fashion to the Skully system.
This means that instantaneous tinting is accomlished with a single press of a button (on the side of the visor, near the locking mechanism). The AGVisor system is completely sealed so as to be weatherproof, and the visor lasts 12hours in dark mode, 50 hours in clear mode.
We have no idea what happens when the AGVisor runs out of batteries, but we do know that there is a mechanical fail-safe to put the visor in clear or tint mode, should the battery deplete while riding.
In that case, the AGVisor recharges in 2hrs, has anti-fog features, and typical of AGV products, it has been extensively homologated (both the visor and the LCD).
No word yet on US pricing or availability, but it won’t be cheap. European pricing is said to be set at €200.
Source: AGV
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