Coros Omni
£179.99 > New connected smart lid
COROS’S ORIGINAL LINX HELMET combined aero styling with audio and smart capabilities. It had built-in bone-conduction speakers, so you could listen to music, take calls and hear navigation cues all without drowning out traffic noise. It would also send alert texts to designated contacts in the event of a crash. We liked the concept but its closed-in aero design and bulk meant it wasn’t suitable for everyday use, especially not in the summer.
The new Omni is Coros’s second model and the angular, sculpted shape has plenty of large vents. It certainly looks sharper than the Linx and its graphics and blend of matt-toned reds give it a classy finish. It’s also available in black, blue and white.
At 364g the Omni isn’t the lightest lid around, but that’s no surprise considering it contains a 700mAh battery. The power pack has given us 7.5 hours of runtime between charges and that’s while running the two strips of LED lights, integrated into the rear of the helmet for increased visibility, and bone-conduction speakers constantly. The helmet also comes with a bar-mounted remote allowing you to control the audio and answer calls – there’s a wind-shielded microphone in the brow for talk back. The speakers’ sound quality is decent, but speech is easily overwhelmed by ambient noise, so the Omni works better for music than it does for podcasts and phone calls. Some of that is down to its design, as the more aero (and larger) Linx doesn’t suffer in quite the same way. The Omni is well shaped, and has bags of adjustment, which is helpful for getting the best out of the bone-conduction speakers, but its pads don’t wick as well as those on other helmets. They soon become saturated when you start riding hard. Fundamentally, it’s perfectly fine and the audio feature is a nice addition that works impeccably for music, although its volume needs beefing up for speech.