Believe it or not, I use a Harbor Freight "HOOD". I've had the speedglas and some others, but just didn't like them. I think I paid around $50 15 years ago. YMMD

 

I personally have purchased several Deko hood's large viewing area true color auto darkening bought through Ebay, also have an OPTREL BACKPACK Helmet Backpack, 2 Side Pockets to protect from messing it up, but I still hang it wherever.

 

Seems to me a few of these "auto darkening" helmuts had legal issues of user eye damage as they didn't provide quick enough darkening or the filtering wasn't effective against the welding arc. Honestly that's about all I know, whether that was an issue for just one brand or across the type, cost may or may not be related.

I would hope that's no longer an issue but if its not been corrected I'd opt for the "old school" hoods you have to lower for eye protection.

 

Older thread, but my 2 cents worth -

Sometimes cheap stuff isn't worth it.

I agree there is some merit to the non-dimming/fixed darkness lenses/hoods - you don't have to worry about the electronics as there are none.

However, in my experience - I really don't like the fixed lenses. I started welding with flux core. That was workable with a fixed lens early on, but was a PITA. I could line up the torch with where I was going to start then cover then fire away. However, it was still sloppy.

I find having a quality hood an essential for good welding experience. I like welding and having a good fully adjustable hood makes welding easier and more fun.

The hood I upgraded to a while back is a Miller Digital Performance. Before that I used a Harbor Freight auto-dimming hood. I replaced the batteries in the HF hood once, then it gave up the ghost completely at the beginning of a fab project. I went to the LWS and compared several Lincolns and Millers and went with the Digital Performance. I have been very happy with it.

The only issue I have with the hood is it eats batteries. It uses CR2450 cell batteries and I have had trouble finding them locally for reasonable prices. Sometimes they are $6-10 per cell. I ordered 6 of them online recently, I forget what I paid for them maybe $3-5 per cell. The trick is to use them only when running the hood, then remove them when not welding for a while. Even still - keeping spare batteries at the ready is a necessity. I keep all the batteries in the sack with the hood so they are always easy to get to.

 

OP by a spammer was removed. Left the rest as it has legit info on the subject.