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SEVEN DAY CYCLIST
CYCLING, BUT NOT USUALLY RACING
LATEST UPDATE JANUARY 3rd 2026
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Unit 1 Winter Liner
51g Large £34.90
The Unit 1 Winter Liner is designed to work with Unit 1 smart helmets, including the Aurora and Faro models. I used ours with the Neon MIPS helmet. Check compatibility before purchase. It can be bodged into other brands, but it does not either look or feel good, in my experience. A shame as it performs well and is one of those simple concepts that make you wonder why you didn’t think of doing it that way yourself.
Pros: warm, you can still hear, secure, tactile.
Cons: specific to Unit 1 Neon and Aurora helmets, not as good when bodged in to other brands, even if you might with some.
Specification
Fundamentally, this is a skull cap with ear-flaps, secured by slipping the helmet straps through a loop on each flap. Thus, it fits closely and the ear-flaps do not flap about. It is designed to be compatible with the Unit 1 Neon helmets, however, there are similar products for some of their other helmets. This fits in with the Unit 1 philosophy of an overall system. Buy into it and you get more than the sum of the parts.
It's made up of stitched panels, but the interior is uniformly tactile, making for a comfortable on-head experience. It insulates and replaces the foam pads. The Velcro pads used by the original pads hold the liner in place.
Size and fit 5/5
Three sizes – not so much because heads come in three sizes, rather that Unit 1 helmets do. Mine was large, which was no surprise. There’s a video to watch showing how to get the correct measurement.
Getting the liner correctly located takes a bot of care. In their YouTube “dive into the details”, Unit 1 suggest folding the liner in half and then spreading it out. That actually works very nicely, but after a while I have just got the feel for where it should go. They recommend removing the foam pads gently, and, I guess the liner should be removed in similar fashion.
Fit is snug. I’ve worn it when gardening on some cold days and there’s been no danger of if losing it to the wind or bending up and down.
Care and durability 3.5/5
With no detail of fabric or washing instructions on the label, I’ve been cautious when washing. I’ve kept the temperature down to thirty and avoided excessive heat when drying. Your bonce might cope with a bit of shrinkage, mine won’t. Having said that, I’ve had no qualms about hanging it on the radiator.
Out and about, I’ve found that it’ll dry after a wet hour or so pretty rapidly, although when it gets really wet you need to bet on overnight drying.
I’ve worn ours on the bike for some forty hours. No sign of snagging or bobbling. I’d be disappointed if there had been, given the price, but it is encouraging for a long and useful life.
Performance 4/5
Admirable, all round. Comfortable and warm, there’s little not to like about this. It certainly provides better protection against the cold than more generic beanies and skull caps. I’ve worn it with the temperature stated as -4C, although the wind chill took this a little lower. True, I could feel the chill, but my head was comfortable. With a wild temperature swing for the ride home that day, things were not unduly clammy at 6C.
I was pleasantly surprised by the way it dealt with rain. Of course, it’s not fully exposed, but there was little ingress in spite of there being no water-resistant coating. Unit 1 offer bungs for the top vents. Equally it is possible to fit a helmet cover over the top (see the helmet review). Mind you, you might find such an arrangement begins to boil your brain. A question of experiment.
Can it fit under other helmets? Maybe, but it won’t be ideal and may well take a good deal of bodging before discovering that you have wasted your time trying. As it is, with the Neon MIPS, you’ll have to readjust straps and cradle to make things snug rather than tight. In addition, Unit 1 helmets are a different shape to most. The winter liner is very much part of a system.
In my old fogeyish way, I tend not to cover my ears or stick ear-buds in them when on the road – bone-conducting models are a different matter. I prefer to hear the traffic, and listen to the birds singing as I ramble my way around. Thus, I was really pleased that the well-insulated winter liner did not obscure sound, although it does muffle it a little. Faster cyclists coming up behind can still be heard!
Value 3.75/5
Simples. It works really well, but only if you buy into the Unit 1 system and cycle in colder weather. If not the former, there are a host of beanie under-helmet garments and helmet covers that will serve. They’ll almost certainly be cheaper, and in my experience, they’ll almost certainly offer less protection against the cold.
Summary
This is a really good bit of gear, but it is very much part of the Unit 1 system. In that its value lies, or does not.
