- Welcome back to another GTN unboxing.
But as you may well have noticed,
I am not in our usual GTN set, no.
I am on a beach in Hawaii,
ahead of the Ironman World Championships,
which is the pinnacle of the Ironman racing calendar,
and with that, we turn to see
some quite exciting new product releases,
so today, I've got the brand new Kask Utopia helmet,
but with a difference, because this is not
your standard Kask Utopia helmet.
This is the limited edition Kona Kask Utopia helmet,
which will also be up for grabs at the end of this video,
so stay tuned for that, but for now, let's get unboxing.
(rumbling) (dramatic jazz music)
- Wow, check out that design.
You are certainly gonna stand out with this lid on your head
but we will get into the design of it a little bit later on.
For starters, you probably have noticed
that this is more of a road helmet
than your dedicated time trial helmet.
In fact, it's what they call an aero road helmet,
so the idea behind an aero road helmet
is that, well, it's largely got the same shape
as your standard road helmet,
but there's slightly more emphasis on its aerodynamics
as opposed to its ventilation as you get
with your standard road helmets.
I say that, obviously ventilation is still very important,
so that's been well thought through with the helmet,
but there is a slight compromise
as opposed to your fully vented standard road helmets.
So I guess you could say that this helmet sits
somewhere between a road helmet
and a specific time trial helmet,
which makes it quite an attractive option
for a lot of triathletes, see, for starters,
in triathlon, we tend to race quite long distances
on the bike, so if you're someone that moves around
quite a lot when you're in the aero position,
so you're moving your head from side to side,
if you haven't got a tail poking out,
then that is actually gonna cause more harm than good
and actually reduce the aerodynamics,
so this would actually be quite a good option
for that having slightly shorter tail to it,
being a standard road shape.
Secondly, for a race like here in Hawaii,
where it's really quite hot,
we've got a little bit more ventilation on this helmet
as opposed to a pure time trial helmet.
Yes, it hasn't got as much as a standard road helmet,
but that's because aerodynamics is still important,
so again, if you're looking to go fast,
you want to focus on the aerodynamics,
but you want to keep your head cool,
and not boil your head inside it,
then this could also be a good option for a hot race.
But now, let's talk more specifically
about this helmet, the Utopia,
because this was actually launched back in January this year
and it's not actually until now
that it's been officially released,
and like with a lot of the Kask helmets,
it's actually been designed and developed
in conjunction with Team Sky.
In fact, we did spy it on the heads of Team Sky
at the Santos Tour Down Under, also back in January.
So to develop the Utopia, Kask actually got in 10
of the best aero road helmets on the market at the time.
They tracked them in the wind tunnel
and they created 3D scans of each
for computational fluid dynamic simulation,
or CFD for short.
In other words, that then allowed them to do testing on it
at different speeds, at different yaw angles,
to essentially simulate crosswinds,
and the result of that is their Utopia,
which they say has a saving of around six watts
at 50 kilometers per hour.
And yes, aerodynamics is a key feature
in this helmet, but as I mentioned earlier,
ventilation is not forgotten,
which makes this helmet quite an attractive option
for all year round racing, so, as I mentioned,
you could be racing in a hot climate,
you still got a little bit of ventilation,
or even for cool climates, it just keeps the head warm
with not too much ventilation, but to help all of this,
it's got this quite clever padding in it,
so this padding is around five mil thick.
It's got a fast wicking material, which they call Resistex,
so the idea being that it pulls the moisture
away from the rider's head and pushes that out
into the outer shell of the helmet.
And this Resistex stuff is really quite clever.
It's a yarn of different textile fibers
that when they bring them together,
they have quite a unique technical feature to them,
so they're both bacteriostatic,
meaning that it protects the skin from external bacteria
and also polluting allergens,
but also it's heat regulating,
so it helps to speed up the evaporation of moisture
and respiration away from the skin,
to help keep that comfortable feel within the helmet
and also just to regulate the heat better.
And finally, on the fit and the feel of the helmet,
the Utopia features Kask's adjustable auto-fit system
which we can use this dial here,
just to make it fit the head better so it feels comfortable.
They also have this leather strap
that we see on most Kask helmets
with the buckle off to the side,
so rather than having the buckle right underneath the chin,
perhaps causing a little bit of irritation,
it's nicely off to the side and does fit quite snugly
and it's really cool, and these come in three sizes.
We've got small and medium, and a large,
with the medium weighing in at just 235 grams.
But by now, you have probably noticed
the rather funky designs to these helmets.
We are out in Hawaii, and we have just had
the Ironman World Championships, and to celebrate,
they've done these two limited edition designs.
We've got the white and the black
with the nice floral design on it as well,
with the black even having
a previous Ironman World Champion's name on it, Leanda Cave.
Otherwise, the Utopia is normally available
in five different colors, you've got a matte black option,
a black and white, a black and yellow,
an orange, and even a white with a little bit of black,
but today, we are giving you the chance to get your hands
on three of these limited edition helmets,
and to do that, you just need to pop down to the description
below this video, hit that link,
head on over to the page and just answer a very quick
and easy question, and fingers crossed.
But before you do that, please do hit that thumbs up button
on this video, and if you would like to be notified
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and if you'd like to see our tech tour
from the Ironman World Championships in 2018,
just click up here, and if you'd like to see
our Kona in numbers video, just click down there.