Welding Helmet Comparison -What Is The Best Welding Helmet? ESAB, Miller, Save Phace

Speaker 1 (00:03):

All right. So we’re out here in ESAB today. We’re going to play with all the welders that they have, MIG, TIG and we’re having a pile of fun. But one of the things that kind of came up in my mind is, all right, of all the different welding masks that are out there, what are all the options? What’s available out there? What’s a good deal and what really works? So these are some of the masks that we have available to us today. We have a ESAB’s A50 mask, which they let me borrow, and I want to compare this next to their SAVAGE A40. Now the difference right off the bat, is that this is a $300 helmet and this one is a $79 helmet. So what I want to know is, okay, you’ve got these two different price points. What’s the difference with these two masks?

Speaker 1 (00:47):

The other thing that I want to take a look at is, first is my Miller Elite helmet. What does it look like? What do the welds look like? What’s the clarity look like? And then I also brought my Save Phace helmet. So we’re going to take a look at the different things and kind of compare and contrast. And at the end of this, I’ll tell you which one I best and kind of the differences. And maybe it’ll help you decide on which helmet that you want to buy. All right. So right off the bat, one of the things that I noticed on the front of this is the amount of sensors that these have. So for me, I’m always underneath vehicles. And sometimes when I strike an arc, let’s say that I strike an arc and it’s a little bit lower and there’s something that’s shielding that light. On this Save Phace, It’s a two sensor helmet. So you can just see the two sensors right there. That means that if you are not getting that weld light right there, this helmet’s not going to darken.

Speaker 1 (01:39):

So for me personally, and this is one of the reasons I stopped using this helmet, I like a four sensor setup that has sensors above and below the viewing stream and all of these other ESAB helmets have that. Now, the other thing that I really like is having a button on the outside and this ESAB A50 has a grind button on the outside, so that whenever you’re welding, “all right, I got to stop. I got to grind something, I got to clean some metal.” You reach up, you push this button. It automatically switches over to grind mode. And it lets you know, inside of here. So when you push this button, this awesome screen lights up, so you don’t have to come out of the helmet to push a button.

Speaker 1 (02:23):

This Savage has that also and you can change the darkness of it right here, and you can also switch it to grind mode, right on the outside. Miller, I’ve got to open it up and I’ve got to push mode right there to get it to the different modes that I want. So this is one thing I really like about these ESAB helmets, is I can adjust it from the outside. The other thing is the headgear. If you’re going to be behind a mask all day, spending money on good headgear is really important. It’s like getting a pair of shoes. It looks nice but they give you blisters. With this, I’m perfectly fine being behind this all day long. It’s very comfortable. And when I wore the ESAB at the shop, same thing, this headgear is very, very comfortable. I don’t think that if I had to do this all day long, I would want to be in this headgear.

Speaker 1 (03:16):

So I will say that about this but for the price point for $79, I don’t know that you can beat it and you can probably upgrade this headgear to something more comfortable and for the Save Phace, kind of a medium grade headgear. I didn’t really have that many complaints about it. Other than when I wore it, I just knew that it was not as comfortable as my Miller Elite. So, so far for me, the two between this

Sentinel and this Miller Elite. Next up [inaudible 00:03:48] test welding and clarity and color. And for that one, do we have any clear lenses here for this? I’ve only ever tried it with the yellow lens. I don’t know if it makes a difference. So I have a clear lens on it or not but I do like how easy it is to replace this lens on the front of there.

Speaker 1 (04:07):

One of the key things, whenever you’re welding is to make sure that you can see the welds. One of the things that I see a lot is that people take the welding helmets and they throw them on the ground. They scratch them up and there’s all this spatter and everything across there. If you notice on my helmet, it’s clear, it’s clean in order to lay down good welds. You got to be able to see what you’re doing. So make sure the outside of it’s clean, make sure the inside of it’s clean. And you can do that just by replacing this. And one of the things that I really like about this one, the Miller, you got to take the whole thing out to replace the lenses in there.

Speaker 1 (04:45):

Same thing with the Savage. But with this one, you can just pop this off and put a new one on from the outside. So you push that button right there. And this pops off. One goes on, peel this off, and you’re good to go. On this Miller, in order to change the lenses. And I change my lenses definitely once a day, sometimes twice a day on the outside, I have to take all of this out. Then I have to take out this. Then I have to peel this off of here and then put a new one in and then put everything back together. Bet you can figure out how much that annoys me. So I like how quick I can change that on there. It’s almost like a tear away whenever you’re racing, you just pop it off, throw a new one on and keep burning metal. So that’s a feature that I really like. Next up, I’m going to look behind both of these side by side and check these masks out, to see how they weld, what the weld looks like and if I can see what I’m doing,

Speaker 1 (06:26):

All right. So right off the bat, the difference with these two hoods is everything is green. Everything looks more realistic in this, in this ESAB hood. There’s also reflections that are inside of this that I’ve never really noticed before. So it could be the light but reflections maybe between the lens and this outer, but I’ve got at the same thing on both of them. Final thoughts on the hood. whenever they dropped off this other hood, how much better [inaudible 00:07:26]. The things I like about it are the grind function I can push the side of it and switch to grind. I love the way the display looks on the inside. As far as comfort, it’s every bit as comfortable as my helmet that I’ve been using and the color of it, the clarity. It doesn’t have the green tint to it. I think that’s probably one of the biggest differences.

Speaker 1 (07:48):

And I didn’t really notice that I was wearing a mask versus not because of the color on there and how clear everything looked. So my final thoughts is it might be time for me to get a new mask and switch over to one of these ESAB. I think they’ve got me on that one. This Digital Elites, a great mask but there’s some functions that I like with this ESAB mask. A little better. Overall, this Savage mask is still a really good mask. The clarity of it, the color of it, is I feel the same as this one, just don’t have all of the features to it. Me personally, I wasn’t a fan of the Save Phace just because of where the sensors are at. I didn’t really like the way that it fit and I couldn’t see a whole lot through there. So if I was going to rank these things and order, I think for usability and everything, I would do the Sentinel, the Miller, the Savage, and then the Save Phace. That’s just my personal opinion. Let me know what you think?