The TORC T12B ‘Blade’ helmet is a fine addition to the line up from TORC, with aesthetics and design ‘slightly’ borrowed from Wesley Snipes’ hairstyle from the trilogy – yup, Blade! You’ll notice that as soon as you set your eyes on the chimney vents and the rear exhaust. You don’t get the fangs though, because there’s no such thing as vampires.
Is there?
This is actually a very nice value helmet for beginners, and is jam packed with loads of features to begin your riding journey on.
We have worked closely with RevZilla, Amazon and 2Wheel over the years to provide our testers with products to review. They are all great partners and unique in their own ways, so make sure to check out their prices. Please don’t forget we may get a commission if you buy from them.
What Would You Love?
TORC has taken extra care in making the controls accessible on this helmet, so they are easy to use even with the gloves on. This is a bonus point considering the lower cost.
The aerodynamic design of the T12 B reduces buffeting at high speeds and the stylish spoiler keeps the helmet stable, reducing the lift.
What’s more, this helmet includes a Blinc Bluetooth communication unit operating on Bluetooth version 2.0. So pair it with another TORC with Blinc and you have your group bantering all the way for as long as its battery lasts.
The unit is decent and takes about 4-5 hours to get fully charged, and is complete with a microphone and a speaker set. It has a Lithium ion battery that gives you 8 hours of continuous talk time and about 150 hours of standby. It is useful to listen to radio, stream music from your smartphone or mp3 player, XM radio and GPS calls. Incoming calls will interrupt your entertainment, but that’s the price you pay until a better communication unit comes along.
The unit also features automatic volume adjustment, a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) filter useful for cancelling background noise while you are on call.
The Blinc is very accessible, and controls are easy to operate even with your gloves on.
The Top Features to Look Out For
A feature-rich helmet that gives the beginners a taste of things to come. How does it fare in basics? Here’s how.
Shell
TORC has used an ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) shell, manufactured by injection molding process for the T12 B. It is not as high end as a tri composite, but it is sufficient as a polycarbonate skeleton.
Its shape is rounded instead of intermediate oval, so if you have ‘earth’ shaped heads, you’ll be just fine with this on. Weighing in at 1680 grams, it can be said to be average. Not too light and not too heavy, but it will depend on how long your neck can tolerate the weight of this lid.
We have worked closely with RevZilla, Amazon and 2Wheel over the years to provide our testers with products to review. They are all great partners and unique in their own ways, so make sure to check out their prices. Please don’t forget we may get a commission if you buy from them.
Visors
The face shield on this helmet is scratch free, which fits on the eye port gasket firmly with a snap, sealing you in and reducing any chance of dirt, rain or gook that has the possibility of leaking through at high speeds. It has decent anti fogging capacities, but not quite as impressive as a PinLock. A breath guard deflects the warm and moist air coming from your mouth or nose downwards and aids in the anti fogging function.
A quick release face shield system makes replacing it a breeze. It is entirely tool less, no fiddling around with a screwdriver. It is just a ‘push’ and ‘pop’. TORC has provided some detents on the shield mount to keep it in a few open positions.
The sun visor is spring loaded and pops down at the push of a button located behind and underneath the visor mount at the left. It pops back up when you pull down the hinge and it locks the visor in. The visor is darker, which is good for sunny days.
Ventilation
Large two chimney vents and a chin vent.
‘Dynamic Flow Ventilation System’ has a very stylish, passive exhaust beneath the spoiler that sucks out the stale air from the helmet by virtue of the Venturi effect.
Large grooves in the EPS for channeling the air.
The included chin curtain is useful if you need to protect yourself from chilly winds in somewhat colder climates.
Padding and Lining
The fabric is softer like suede, but not ultra soft like micro fiber and wicks up sweat really fast. The cheek pads and the comfort liner can be washed with cold water in about 20-30 seconds and dried naturally to remove that soaked up sweat.
Cheek pads are attached to the EPS using snap fit mount points and can be removed very easily. In fact the system is so loose that they may even snap out when you least expect it.
The comfort liner has brow and rear snap mounts that allow you to take it out without much effort.
Customer Reviews
Some of them are not impressed with the speaker units, saying that they sounded more like low quality headphones. Others experienced flimsy fittings of the cheek pads and some other items which came off a bit too often while removing the helmet from the head.
The third complaint was for the wind noise, but only a minority of customers actually felt it that loud to complain.
We have worked closely with RevZilla, Amazon and 2Wheel over the years to provide our testers with products to review. They are all great partners and unique in their own ways, so make sure to check out their prices. Please don’t forget we may get a commission if you buy from them.
Bottom Line
The TORC T12 B ‘Blade’ is a great choice for a beginner helmet and is priced competitively. There are some nitpickings that may annoy you for a bit, but then you should be fine with them considering the price you are getting this piece at. After all, YGWYPF. ‘You Get What You Pay For’.