POC Officially Launches Procen Air Helmet

While POC is at Sea Otter this year, the Procen AIR launch is something we want to go a bit more in depth on with a stand alone article. While the helmet has been raced since the beginning of the 2024 season, it’s not a surprise per se, but now we have more details behind this TT inspired aero road helmet.

The Procen Air is POC’s latest aero road helmet, a market that continues to grow as riders of all levels are looking for those aero gains anywhere they can. It takes a lot of inspiration from the Procen TT helmet, while making it more feasible for use on the road. But the helmet is not just there to make you fast, POC has always had a strong emphasis on safety, so it needs to be fast, work for long days in the saddle, and provide safety to help avoid a crash (visibility and sound enhancement) and protect in the event a rider does go down. To do all of this, they worked with the EF Pro Cycling team to develop and get feedback from both riders and the performance experts.

“Impact-wise, we know how to make a safe helmet,” explains POC’s Director of Hard Goods, Magnus Gustavsson. “Here, it was more about being on the bike, in the peloton, where you have a lot of things happening around you. Our mission with the Procen Air was to create a helmet with all the watt savings of a TT helmet, not compromising safety and improving a rider’s ability to hear and see.”

To make a great aero road helmet, you need to balance safety, aerodynamics, comfort, weight, and ventilation. Each area has their own importance to how the helmet performs, and if the blend is off, the helmet won’t work.

Let’s start off with the ventilation. From the outside, you have three ports in the front, and a sculpted rear exit port. The location, size, and shape of the front ports helps to reduce the high-pressure zone of air at the front of the helmet, and send some if it into the helmet. By reducing this stagnant air, it reduces the drag. Inside, channels help guide air through, creating the Venturi effect, which helps to pull hot air from the head out the back with fresh, cool air from the front. A similar design is used in POC’s Ventral helmets.

When it comes to protection, POC is taking some different approaches to add additional safety. First is the magnetic lens that can be run in place of wearing sunglasses. While at first, it seemed odd, it actually makes sense, even for road riding. Think about the glasses you where when you ride. There are probably some blind spots from the frame. The Oakley Jawbreakers, for example, have a small blind spot on the sides where the lens slides in behind the O icon. With the magnetic lens, there is no blind spot. Again, it’s nothing new, but not something you see every day for road riding, which might be a turnoff for some more traditionalist riders. The lens can either be worn to enhance visibility and aerodynamics of the helmet, or be undocked with a single hand, and attached on the back of the helmet in a way that won’t interfere with a rider in an aero position. POC uses their Clarity lenses to provide great precision and contrast.

Sound is the unique part of safety. When you are riding, think about how loud air can be when rushing past you when you are riding. We’ve seen some attachments that go on your helmet straps to reduce this sound, but not much from a road helmet. By reducing the turbulent air around the ear, you can hear more of what is going on around you. The design of the Procen Air uniquely (at least for non-TT helmets) covers the upper part of the ear to protect it from the passing air, but is still open enough to let you hear what is around you.

For fit, POC uses their whole-head adjustment system to provide a secure fit for a wide range of head shapes. In back, they use a standard dial to adjust the fit around the head from temple to temple, along with foam pads on the front of the helmet. On the sides, they use their standard splitter that does offer some adjustment, but not the full vertical adjustment you see on some helmets. A standard buckle takes care of closure at the chin.

Bringing all of this together is the aerodynamic performance of the Procen Air. EF Pro Cycling have already seen plenty of success with the new helmet, which POC says backs up data collected from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) at the beginning of development, wind tunnel testing at the middle, and on-road testing at the end before officially being used in races. Compared to the Ventral, POC’s previously aero-optimized helmet that had a very strong focus on ventilation, the Procen Air shows gains of anywhere between 5 to 18 wats when riding at the 30-60 km/h range. Unfortunately, no other aero data was provided to compare the new helmet to others on the market.

Comfort we can’t speak on until we would get a sample in our hands, but POC says the claimed weight falls in at 350g for a Medium. For what the helmet is, with the lens and covering over the ears, the weight is understandable, but it is a bit heavier than some of the other top helmets on the market. Taking into consideration the weight of glasses will add a little weight to the number, but on longer rides, 100g is a little more noticeable on your head.

At $400, it is not going to be a cheap helmet either, but if you are looking for all the aero gains you can get, this is probably going to be a helmet on your list. The Procen Air will be available in small, medium, and large sizes, and their Hydrogen White, Uranium Black Matt colors.

It will be interesting to see if other brands take the leap into a more radical design like POC did with the Procen Air. It won’t be a helmet for everyone, but neither was Giro Air Attack when it first hit the market with its visor, but it was the helmet that arguably kicked off the aero road helmet trend. The Procen Air is available now.

www.pocsports.com