The Best Welding Hood, Plus: what to buy on a budget

Welding headgear has been improving at an impressive clip.

The ideal autodarkening welding helmet would possess the following properties, in order of priority:

• externally actuated grind mode
• low shade in passive state
• lightweight, ergonomic
• automatically adjusted welding shade
• large viewing area

A grind mode that lets in enough light and is easy to actuate makes the biggest actual real-world difference when you are using a hood. Not only does it make life much easier/faster, but it is an important safety consideration.

Painters spend more time prepping than painting; so it is with welders and grinding. A hood needs a grind mode because grinding sparks are sufficient to trigger the helmet into darkening. If a welder has to reach up inside her mask to activate the grind mode, they're not going to do it. It just doesn't work. Try it. That's how 90% of autodark welding hoods with a grind mode currently work. 

$300 of unusable grind mode

What the welder will instead do is remove the welding hood when they need to grind something. And maybe or maybe not put on some other eye protection. Ever had a cutoff wheel fly apart in your face?

Being able to use your welding hood for grinding eye protection is simply the best solution.

Optrel has the closest to ideal hood currently, with their "liteflip Autopilot." It incorporates a flip-up lens with the only auto-adjusting shade currently on the market, aside from ArcOne.

The second most innovative hood is the Optrel Vegaview because of its low 2.5 passive shade and external grind button. I also like the way that Miller and 3M have increased peripheral vision on the Miller T94 and Speedglas version, respectively. Eastwood is now selling a hood that does a lot of these things at a slightly lower pricepoint and quality level, here.

Manufacturers are finally catching on to the importance of the external grind button. Look at ESAB and 3M's latest hoods.

What should I buy on a budget?

The widely cloned Chinese hoods like this one are good solid hoods to be sure. It has a pretty standard passive shade of 4, which is still useable. My main beef with these is the lack of an external grind button. Instead it has a non-intuitive dial, which makes it difficult to consistently set it back to your welding shade.

Another good option is an old-school passive helmet with an Arcone autodark filter.

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What about your lungs?

You don't think MIGing some galvanized widget together is more important than your lungs and body, do you? I've done it too, but let's move forward.

Here are 2 simple ways to have respiratory protection without using a PAPR. And by the way, a basic p100 filter is usually all that's necessary for welding hazards.

1) Buy the North full face welding respirator (mine was $100 on ebay) and use the abovementioned ArcOne lens.

2) Wear a normal AP Respirator under your hood. It's not that bad.

I tried this "backpack" adapter that north offers, but I couldn't recommend it. The 90° elbow was actually thicker than the pancake cartridges.

Other Considerations

• All battery-powered things without replaceable batteries are disposable
• 4 sensors is better than 2