Hats off?

Not all hats are built equally, though. Take an average baseball cap—your headset will push the top button into your dome, and it might not seal over your ear with the cup meeting the hat’s sweat band, creating a gap for noise to enter and giving you some old-fashioned hearing loss.

V1 Hats claims to have the solution. No top button and a “micro-thin” side panel instead of a sweat band to give you a better seal on your headset. The hats have either a mesh for the entire back of the hat for a more breathable feel, or full fabric except for the ear panels. They come in a traditional baseball cap shape or a trucker style. The company also says the hat helps in other headset scenarios, like shooting and gaming.

I put the hat to the test over a three-hour cross-country flight—half that time in the V1 hat, half that time in my other, generic (albeit top buttonless) hat. I tried the V1 hat with the extra mesh—called the High Performance Ventilated—and it’s a nice touch, especially in airplanes with a tip-up bubble canopy like the Van’s RV–12, where opening the window is not really an option, and you are almost guaranteed to roast on hot summer days.

I have a passive noise reduction David Clark headset and was looking forward to seeing if there really was any difference in the noise reduction. Frankly, if there was, it was minimal. The seal I got from the other hat is pretty good, and the V1 was nice and light around the cup area, but the noise level came across around the same. The hat only meets the headset cup for a small portion, and so the seal is marginally better, at best.

From a comfort standpoint, it’s nice and light. It was much easier for me to forget it was there than a regular hat. To take the company’s claims further, I also tried the hat in a shooting range environment, as well as gaming, and got similarly marginally better results.

But then there’s the value problem. The hats retail at $39.95 plus shipping. Sporty’s sells a buttonless pilot hat with custom embroidery for $24.95. Some outdoors stores online offer many options for hats with no top button priced even more competitively than that.

My final verdict? It’s worth a look, but only if you have a problem with other hats. If you love flying with hats like I do, and other hats are uncomfortable, or you find yourself sweating, the V1 hat is something I’d recommend for you. Otherwise, it’s hard for me to justify spending over $40 on a hat.

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