HS-2 Heat Shield for Face and Neck Protection | Wildland Firefighter Gear | Heat, Smoke & Ember Resistant | Essential Safety Equipment for Wildfire Fighting | Perfect for Wildland Firefighters, First Responders & Emergency Situations

Purchased this new HS2 to replace a 5 year old one given to a newbie FF. I will try to list the pros and cons:PROS - Easy to put on. Easy to breathe thru. Filters out the smoke really well. No more black snot after the fire. Easy to clean. Use any filter I want (usually just buy replacements from my local hardware store when my department ran out of replacments). Replacement filters are inexpensive. Mask is light weight and rolls up easily. No burns to the face even when fires turned my way and I had to duck. The photo on the box shows a guy wearing the mask and a flame on it. I can see why now. Jacket collar got singed but not my face! That is where it shines. Lungs feel good afterwards, not like a I smoked a pack. The mask is legit, invented by firefighters in SoCal and that’s probably why it works so well.CONS - Gets warm on your face but that goes for any mask or helmet, not a ding there, just an observation. Not bad but noticeable. If you are not in good aerobic shape you are going to have a hard time breathing thru anything. Becomes harder to breathe thru after about 15-20 minutes of hard work. Of course anything that filters out smoke is going to be hard to breathe thru when working your butt off. The center fabric is a mesh and it catches on velcro in the washing machine, but as long as you keep it in away from that you’re good. Take the filter out before you wash it. Won’t reduce the temperature of fire gases but that’s a given. I don’t think anything except a scba can help with that. I would not use it for overhaul in a structure fire, mostly because only a scba is required for that part of the job and without positive pressure, I would be inhaling toxic gases. I also would not use it on a car fire for the same reasons. Basically, the right tool for wildland fires and only for wildland fires. Make sure to keep it in its own pocket away from sharp tools in your pocket otherwise that mesh can get punctured.PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: This one works better than the old one I had, looks like they improved on the design a bit. At least they haven’t changed the design like so many companies seem to do lately (trying to save a few pennies). I have used the Hot Shield many times, on wildland fire strike teams, small and large brush fires, etc. In summary, the HS-2 performs exactly like described and how I expected. I used to have the really, really old one which was the most innovative piece of wildland gear I had ever seen or used. The first one I bought was yellow made of kevlar & nomex) and it worked fine, not as easy to breathe thru as this new one, so I am glad they improved on it since then. This new one also has a optional head strap which is a bonus. Keeps the mask from slipping down my nose. Don’t have to use the head strap all the time or even at all, but its a “nice-to-have” on the longer incidents. Over the years, I have tried every mask or device for brush fires I can find. I have tried bandannas, paint respirators with cartridges, scarfs, bandannas made out of wetsuit rubber, masks for motorcycle riding. I tried the “manta ray”, the whiffs (junk), I tried them all. Each one of these other masks had issues. Embers would burn through, smoke got through, uncomfortable, fell apart, cheap materials basically worthless. Some of the masks I tried were made of materials I would not trust with a match burn, much less a real flame. Had to try them all to know what worked. The Hot Shield mask blows them all away. The material they use is practically fireproof. I watched a video on their website where a guy melts a penny right on the mask with a small butane torch and the penny turned molten metal while the material just turned brown, still held up.