Like many Arai users I often looked at other riders with their internal sun visors with a little bit of envy. Because of where I live, I normally ride with a very dark visor but if I am later than I anticipated riding home it means I have to have the visor open to see. That is an open invitation for every flying bug to commit suicide on my eyeballs! Not a happy situation. Of course one could carry a spare clear visor but that is such a pain in the arse. I was also being caught out by my visor becoming fogged up when it rains. It is fine when you are moving because the vents do their job but as soon as you get held up in traffic instant blindness. In this situation one has two choices. Keep the visor down and try and guess what is in front of you or open the visor. If you chose the second option then you are screwed because as soon as you lift the visor rain comes down the inside and that is that. Frustrating to say the least. Still, because I have a long history of using Arai's as I believe that in the event of an accident they are the best bet to stop my brain rattling against my skull and therefore lessoning the chance of me because a certified vegetable or worse. So I was prepared to put up with these annoying issues for the sake of safety. But no longer, I have now purchased the Arai Pro Shade System and, for once, the publicity is matched by its performance. It come with three pieces. A Pinlock Visor, a Pinlock insert and a Sun shade. They all go together easily and once fitted they have transformed my riding experience. The Pinlock insert stops all misting of the visor and the shade protects from the sun. Now Arai did not want to incorporate an internal sun visor into their helmets for safety reasons (having one either occupies space that should be used by internal protection or requires the helmet to be bigger) so they mounted the sun visor on the outside of the normal visor. When it gets dark the rider just flicks up the sun visor and they now have normal clear vision. The real magic of this system is that with the sun shade in the up position you would imagine that it would catch the wind and cause a problem but it does not. I read the reviews that said it was amazing and there was no impact having the sun visor up and to be honest I doubted that it was as good as they were saying. However it truly is. Yesterday I took the ZX14R up to 220kph, turned my head left and right and could not feel the visor being caught by the wind at all. How the hell they have manged this is beyond me but it must have entailed many hours in a wind tunnel. It is absolutely magic.
Some riders have stated that they wish the sun shade was a little deeper as they have stated a little sunlight can still be seen by the rider. They must have eyeballs on their chin! I have found it to be perfect. I think that if they made it a little bigger it would affect the air flow and cause it to catch the wind in the open position.
So it is a brilliant product that has been worth the wait. If you have an Arai and dont have the Pro Shade System, do yourself a favour and get one. You wont regret it. Well done Arai, that why I spend money on your helmets