Petzl Elios

This is a lightweight, well ventilated helmet for your head. Best used while rock and ice climbing. The headband has a quick tightening knob on the back for size adjustment. It has headlamp clamps that you don't notice until you need them. The chin strap is easy to connect. Every connection point on the straps has teeth, so it is time consuming to adjust, but once you get it adjusted it doesn't move. There is no sun visor lip. The front comes right down to your eyebrows.

This is a lightweight, well ventilated helmet for your head. Best used while rock and ice climbing. This is a unisex design but does not have a pony tail cutout on the back like some helmets do. There are two sizes available.

Over all, this helmet does its job well.

The strong points are the light weight and ventilation of the helmet.

The drawbacks are the small adjustment range and the difficulty in adjusting the chin strap.

The headband has a quick tightening knob on the back for size adjustment. You can wear a thin beenie or hat with this helmet by just rotating the adjustment knob a few clicks. When you remove the beenie, just a couple of clicks of the quick adjustment knob, and you have it adjusted snug again. Nice, quick and secure.

The chin strap buckle is nice and easy to snap, you can do it once handed. It is easy to adjust the tightness. It also doesn't move once you get it set. I have a slightly "longer" or "taller" head than normal. For me, I wished I could lower the Y junction on each slide of the chip strap to clear my ear lobes, but this is not possible with this strap system. You can only adjust the chin strap angle forward or backward. To do so, you have to remove the helmet and pry the strap out of each connection point (every connection point has teeth) to feed or take up slack to adjust the chin strap angle. It's very time consuming, but you should only have to do it but once, if any. Once you get it adjusted, it doesn't move or slip.

The helmet has headlamp clamps that you don't notice until you need them. I've never caught them on any gear or rock feature. They are out of the way and do not cause any problems. The headlamp strap securely slides under the clamps and stays put.

There is no sun visor lip or "bill" on the front edge. The front edge comes straight down to your eye brows with just a slight lip. This allows you to squeeze into holes while caving and to get real close to the rock while climbing. A few times I've been in the rain and wished it had a bigger lip to keep the water drips out of my face.

This helmet fits very close to your forehead but much higher on the top of your head where the padding is. This causes you to have a slightly alien look. But I'd rather look weird and have the protection than not have any protection.

Lightweight, plenty of ventilation, easy to adjust.

What's not to like?

I wore this helmet just once last year. Didn't really needed it, decided to take it for a test drive, just to get the feel of it.

My head circumference is 55.5cm so I could marginally fit in Size 1 (48-56cm). If I was going to wear a beanie...no way. That's why I chose Size 2 (53-61cm) with room to spare.


It features a 5-step side ventilation system and a fixed one in the back. Couldn't get any better than this.












The headlight clips seem robust but they're somehow tight for the headband of my Nitecore HC50 and had some difficulty to place it correctly. Apart from that it's all good.




The adjustment system in the back becomes intuitive once you wear the helmet. I did the adjustment wearing a pair of Mechanix gloves (that easy).



The foam in front does the job as far as wicking sweat is concerned. My forehead was irritated when I removed the helmet. Hmm...maybe I over-tied it, don't know.






Adjusting the straps is also very easy with this clip system although I'm not sure if it's going to last for long. Being a motorcyclist for decades I put my faith in double buckle rather than any other mechanism.

Can't say anything about maintaining integrity after a rock or a chunk of ice falls on it and hope I never will.

Overall I like this helmet. I read a lot of reviews before buying it and everybody seems happy with it. Add another one to this list! :)

Great Helmet. I use it for alpine and rock climbing. Most of the time I don't even know that I have it on, it is that comfortable. Head lamp fits perfect on the clips. Wheel ratchet for the fit is easy to use even with gloves on.

Rock Climbing:
Pros- Light, comfortable, vents great in summer, and adjustable.

Alpine Climbing:
Pros-Light, the part that ratchets down folds into the helmet for easy packing, and adjustable to what is on your noodle.

Cons- none

I would buy this helmet again!