Let me begin by admitting that until very recently, I haven’t welded in 30 years. Furthermore, I’ve never used a self-darkening helmet, so I have nothing to compare it to. With that said, I’m a huge fan.The helmet comes separated from the headband, and unless you have a microscope on hand, the installation instructions are useless. Seems like everyone’s going to miniature icons for instructions, and as any woman can tell you, smaller is not better. Fortunately, the operation is fairly intuitive.Once I got it together, it fit and felt amazing. The graphics are really cool. I love the skull and flames front and center, but until I got it, I didn’t even notice the naked lady on the motorcycle. Being a biker and hetero dude, I like that.There are a ton of adjustments on this helmet, and no matter what size noggin you have, I’m sure you can get it just right. It’s super comfortable on me, and I wear prescription glasses.It comes with two AAA batteries installed. There is a film you have to peel off on both sides of the viewer, which needs to be removed to do so. The whole viewer just clips in and out, which is cool, and makes it easy to change batteries or lenses. (Spares are included, in case you burn it with spatter or scratch it.)Inside you have the delay and sensitivity controls, along with a test button, low battery light, and switch for the front LED light if you are working in the dark. You’re not going to light up the room, but it’s adequate to see what you’re doing. Oh, and when switched on, it will only light when the helmet detects that it’s dark.I love the shade feature on the side of the helmet, which is easy to change even with heavy gloves on. On ‘Grind’ setting, it won’t darken (by design), but you’ll still be protected. You also set it on ‘Grind’ for storage. Basically, ‘Grind’ is ‘Off’.But does it work? I wanted to find out without roasting my corneas, and the easiest way to test was by looking at the sun. For a few minutes, it seemed to be working well. Looking away from the sun it would be see-through, then as I looked closer to the sun, it darkened. Yeah!I tested the darkened lens against a “passive” welding helmet that I have, and found that while the passive lens *might* have been a little darker when looking into the great ball of fire, both allowed me to stare at it without any discomfort. This helmet’s view of the sun was almost white, while the passive lens was bright yellow.Then I got flashed by the sun. Hmm.I removed and tested the batteries, hoping they were low. Nope, they were brand new, and 1.59V each. I took the helmet back outside, and played around with the sensitivity, as well as the shade and delay settings. Of course, it won’t darken with the shade switch on ‘Shade’, but that wasn’t the case. I used settings 10 through 13, with no change.After about 15 minutes of playing with the settings, I determined that looking at the sun is a good way to test if the darkening (Shade) function is working, but that the slightest cloud can trick the sensors into thinking you’re done welding, and turn off the shade. Clearly, it’s not a good idea to stare at the sun with it. I decided to actually weld with it, and found that it works perfectly.I love everything about this helmet, and I hope this helps.