The SH+ Zeuss ticks all the boxes for an upper-end road bike helmet: sleek, stylish and with inlaid carbon accents. We immediately felt at home with its familiar shape.
The Italian-designed and made Zeuss uses in-mold technology, fusing the microshell to the expanded polystyrene liner which itself contains a nylon truss to hold the helmet together during impact. Our small/medium weighs 306g – light, but not headline-grabbingly so.
Adjustability is good, with a large slide ratchet retention buckle at the rear allowing easy one-handed twiddling on the move. The rear nylon chin straps also use a ratchet buckle under the chin instead of a sprung C-clip; it’s neither better nor worse, it just takes a few minutes to get the hang of it.
The straps exit the inside of the liner but aren’t tethered far enough back in the shell, meaning you have to wiggle them backwards and down into position behind your ears once the helmet is on – a faff which isn’t really acceptable at this price.
The inner shape is nearly identical to that of Giro helmets, sitting deep enough to give confidence without feeling like a mountain bike lid. The basic foam pads are comfortable but they’re not the fast drying anti-bacterial type that we'd have expected.
This article was originally published in Cycling Plus magazine.