First ride with my new lid that the wife gave me for my birthday (in 3 weeks lol) Of course she left it to me to choose what I wanted so that was fun. I think I read every review and helmet report on the net and visited a couple of local bike dealers to have a close look at what's available.
Of course I wanted the Shoei GT-Air at close to $800 but the wife vetoed that. She can't understand the need to spend more than the $120 I spent on my R-jays Striker a few years ago! I tried on a few others, but was really impressed with the Shark range. I tried a few of these but felt really comfortable in the S700S and decided that I'd settle for that. Asking price at the dealer was $299. Doing more web research, I found that Peter Stevens was selling the S700S in my size in their Ebay shop for $199. As much as I don't like using dealers to try on stuff, then going online, the $100 saving was too much to ignore.
I was looking for a comfortable helmet that was reasonably quiet behind my standard ST1100 screen. I have an R-jays Tour-tech flip face lid that was OK on my K1100LT with the screen adjusted for optimum airflow (God I miss that) but on the ST I just couldn't hear anything for wind noise and reverted to my Striker that is much quieter but still noisy.
So setting off to work in the Adelaide CBD from the north-eastern suburbs where I live, I was pleased to find that this helmet is very quiet. The ear-padding comes close to my ears, unlike the Striker/Tour-tech and the lower rim padding comes in a fair way further which seems to reduce the amount of air swirling up into the helmet. This helmet is pinlock ready, but I tend to crack the visor on cold days so I can't see myself using that, but I did make use of the built-in dark-tint flip-down visor and that works really well. The Tour-tech has one of these but it doesn't retract all the way into the helmet and often sits within line of sight - a major distraction for me, so I ended up taking it out. No such problems with the S700S. The sun visor is controled by a lever by the left-hand visor mount and is just about perfect for me.
Ventilation is excellent and the helmet is light and comfortable in city traffic with good field of view.
Coming home, I decided to do the Gorge Road coming up through Kersbrook where I could briefly reach highway speeds to see what the noise level is like at 100-110 kph. Once again, while there is a definite increase in wind noise, it's very easy to live with being about the same level as the Striker at 70-80kph. Strangely, ducking behind the screen didn't make a lot of difference in wind noise.
Overall, I'm really happy with this helmet on my ST. It feels like a quality helmet at a bargain price (still available btw at
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Shark-S700s-Helmet-LAB-Orange-Large-60cm-Internal-Sunvisor-Road-Motorcycle-/141496205456?pt=AU_Clothing_Merchandise_Media&hash=item20f1d4c090) with some good features that does exactly what it says it does. Of course, testing its crashworthiness is not something I plan to do.
