Harbor Freight Helmets: What Kind Do They Sell & How Much Do They Cost?

Whether you're working with certain volatile materials in a workshop or just carrying large loads around a jobsite, you should always have proper head protection. All forms of safety equipment are important, of course, but a good helmet can quite literally save your life, whether from a sudden dropped object or an errant spark off a welding torch.

Those two particular scenarios are the specific sectors covered by the helmets sold by Harbor Freight. The hardware chain sells a variety of safety equipment, including a small handful of different helmets. These are all provided by its various in-house brands, for the purposes of basic jobsite safety and specifically for use with welding equipment. 

The prices on these helmets vary widely depending on the brand making them and the purpose they're intended for, but generally speaking, hard hats range from $12 to $22, while welding helmets range from $40 to $170. The price you'll end up paying will depend on how large and feature-rich the helmet in question is.

The cheapest kind of helmet available at Harbor Freight is simple white hard hats. It offers two hard hats from two of its smaller in-house brands, both intended for general-purpose protection while working at an active jobsite.

The cheaper hard hat, the Workhorse Ratcheting Hard Hat, costs $11.99. This hard hat is lightweight and ANSI-compliant, with an absorbent brow pad able to endure most sudden impacts. Its ratcheting system has six points, so you customize the fit to sit higher or lower on your head. As far as we can discern, this hard hat is the only product that Workhorse produces.

The slightly more expensive hard hat, the 3M SecureFit Full-Brim Hard Hat, costs $21.99. Besides this hard hat, 3M also makes a couple of other miscellaneous products, including automotive masking tape and spray gun cleaning solution. The helmet is built with 3M's SecureFit technology, allowing it to flex and absorb impacts while still sitting comfortably on your head, as well as cover your neck and ears from UV rays. Like the Workhorse helmet, its fit is customizable, with a 4-point ratchet for altering size and height.

The other, more expensive kind of helmet available for sale at Harbor Freight is welding helmets, intended to completely protect your face and head while using welding equipment like an acetylene torch. This particular niche is more widely supported by Harbor Freight, with 10 different helmets available across three of its in-store brands: Chicago Electric, Titanium, and Vulcan.

The cheapest welding helmets at Harbor Freight come from Chicago Electric, which deals in a variety of workshop-grade power equipment such as saws, concrete vibrators, and welding tools and accessories. Chicago Electric offers four welding helmets, with prices ranging from $29.99 to $49.99. The cheapest option, the Chicago Electric Fixed Shade Welding Helmet, has a fixed shade viewing area. The next helmet up, the Chicago Electric Standard Auto-Darkening welding helmet, has an auto-darkening view. The most expensive models, the Chicago Electric Blue Design and Chicago Electric Red Design Welding Helmets, also having a built-in grind shield.

The middling welding helmets at Harbor Freight are produced by Titanium, which also produces a good number of the store's all-purpose welding equipment. Titanium makes two welding helmets, the Titanium 7 square inch Auto-Darkening Welding Helmet priced at $79.99 and the Titanium 9.3 square inch Auto-Darkening Welding Helmet priced at $109.99. These helmets are similar, though the higher-end model has more arc sensors, a larger viewing area, and wider variable shade adjustment controls.

The most expensive welding helmets at Harbor Freight are made by Vulcan, the chain's producer of top-shelf welders and welding accessories and consumables. Vulcan creates the remaining four welding helmets, with prices ranging from $139.99 to $169.99. The Vulcan ARCSAFE Auto-Darkening Welding Helmet encompasses the three cheaper models, with two differentiated by a Flag Design and Flame Design. The most expensive model, the Vulcan Premium ARCSAFE Welding Helmet, boasts Vulcan's REALVIEW technology to improve the clarity of the lens while it's inactive. It's also generally larger, while also using specialized mounting points to improve weight distribution.