LAS Cronometro helmet

The LAS Cronometro helmet is a (relatively) cheap way to make your head fully aero for your next evening 10 or the club 25. Overall it puts in a good performance and is comfier than you'd expect from an aero lid.

It's a bit heavy, and the venting isn't best in class, but for the money it's a good buy if you're looking to shave some seconds off your time.

Time trialing is very much a discipline where minor gains add up to a better performance. But what to upgrade first? Eighty percent of the overall drag of bike and rider is the rider, so minimising frontal area and making the body as slippery as possible are primary concerns.

Buy LAS Cronometro helmet
Find a LAS dealer

Aero bars should always be your first purchase. Fitting them drops your frontal profile drastically and it's commonly held this can be worth up to a minute over a ten-mile time trial. But an aero lid is high on the list too. Wearing one smooths the airflow over your head and back, reducing drag. It might be worth a quarter of a minute over ten miles. That could be a few places, and it's an easy win.

The LAS Cronometro is a fairly classic design. While people like Kask (with the Bambino) and Lazer (the Wasp Air) are busy chopping tails off the LAS still has a full teardrop profile. Current wisdom would dictate that it should be better facing straight into the wind, with the shorter helmets performing better over a wider range of wind angles (and also head angles when you get tired and start bobbing around). There's still plenty of both types of lid out there, so probably you can take your pick; either will be more effective than a road lid, especially a non-aero one.

It's a one-piece outer and there are two small vents in the front which channel air through the EPS inner shell. There's a full front visor, which is repositionable with a bit of pulling and swearing, and you get tinted and yellow lenses. You get the normal goldfish-bowl feeling of being in a fully-enclosed lid but the vents do their job and the side visibility is pretty decent. The harness is basic, the pads simple and comfy. Once it's on it's a pretty easy wear, and there's room '' just '' behind the lens for a pair of glasses. However, I tended to wear contact lenses with the Cronometro because it was easier to get it on and off.

And did it work? Well, I managed a personal best on one local course, so I guess that's good. I was wearing aero shoe covers for the first time and they probably helped a bit too. And it was a nice calm day: it's impossible to single out the empirical effect of the helmet. But I did go faster, and I did look pro, even though I don't have a skin suit.

Overall it's a good lid. Given that you can easily pay twice as much as this for an aero helmet it seems like a good choice if you're starting out on the road to faster TT times. It's fairly basic in terms of build but it's a slippery shape, and it's comfy and not unbearably hot. It's probably a good idea to get your aero bars and skin suit first, but then this should be an option. The disc wheel can wait.

Verdict

Good lower-cost aero helmet for shaving a few seconds off your personal best