I bought both the HeadSweats Race Hat and SweatVacs Race Hat at the same time so I could pit them against each other. I was a little skeptical about how well either could possibly work, but I am a heavy sweater, so I was desperate. Traditional cotton headbands soak up sweat to a point, but then they become saturated and stop working any further. And they do nothing to protect my eyes or the top of my head from the sun, which is important with the summer approaching. The HSRH is extremely light and well fitted. I did have to take up the adjustment strap at the back a little, but not much. The adjustment strap has a thin plastic buckle on it. I'm a little worried that it might be a failure point in the future, with temperature and humidity swings, and the general thinness of the plastic material. The SVRH's wide velcro strap (with reflectivity to boot) seems superior to me. But time will tell. The HSRH is very basic in appearance. It's basically monochromatic--just one color. There is a logo on the side, and there is a nice black undersurface beneath the long bill, but overall the HSRH looks a little plain and boring, if you care about that sort of thing. It really does come off as something intended from the ground up to be decorated with a promotional logo of some sort, to the point that it seems overly dependent on that sort of decoration, because without such, the hat just looks blah. (Maybe that's partially because I picked GRAY, which is one of the dullest colors known to man!) The SweatVacs model is visually more appealing. It's got reflectivity at the front and back, while the HeadSweats model does not. I picked up a SVRH with contrasting stitching, for just a little more pop, but this HSRH is all just one single color. The HeadSweats hat is also consistently cheaper, though. They keep it simple, and they keep the price down, comparatively speaking. That said, functionally, I am extremely impressed with the HSRH. It wicks moisture away from my forehead and sweaty hair very well. While it quickly feels wet in my hands when I take the hat off at a drink stop, it still feels lightweight, so it doesn't retain very much of the moisture that it absorbs. It really does transport the sweat from my skin outward into the air. I've had so many so-called wicking fabric garments fail to do that in humid southeast Texas, that this hat's fabric surprised me with its effectiveness. Coolmax kicks caboose. I rinse the hat off in the shower after every run, and then hand-wash it with detergent in the sink at the end of the week. Either way, it air dries in front of a floor fan in about 2 hours. My biggest gripe about both the HeadSweats and the SweatVacs Race Hats is the construction of the interior sweatbands: (1) They're both quite thin, which seems rinky-dink. Maybe that allows for better wicking, but coming from traditional stand-alone headbands, it seems chintzy in these hats. (2) The built-in headbands are sewn at the bottom, but open around the top of the bands, which allows them to flop down and outside of the hats. I often feel the sweatbands dangling down the front center of my forehead, and have to keep fiddling with them to stuff the headbands back up inside the hats. They should've been sewn in better by both manufacturers. Still, the hat works. Plain as it might look, it does what it's supposed to do, even in hot, humid, Texas. Gotta respect that! Because of the disparity in the looks department, I bought a lot more SweatVacs hats directly from their official website. I bought a few more HeadSweats too, but I opted for slightly fancier versions than their basic Race Hat in order to work around the plainness factor. The HeadSweats website also offers a decent discount as well. Overall, if I could, I'd rate the SweatVacs Race Hat 1/2-star ahead of the HeadSweats. They both work very well, but the SVRH looks a little better.
