I have a couple different generations of this hat. I use this hat for my travels and fishing. It has a wide brim that keeps the sun off your eyes. This hat is very light and packs well.

My original hat had the mesh all around and my last one had the mesh venting only in the front. I found the all around mesh kept my head cooler. Not sure why they changed that design. Perhaps they can make the top with a more breathable natural material than polyester.

I love the hat but one thing they need to improve on is the stiffness of the brim. After long uses and washes, the brim become floppy and droops. Otherwise, I am very happy with the hat.

I have one of these hats which I used last summer for hiking, nature photography, leading trail tours and kayak lake tours. I decided to purchase another this season in a different color. Very light but quite rugged. It packs very easily when I do photography trips. The brim does not get in my way when I'm looking through the viewfinder like a baseball hat. I would recommend this hat to anyone doing most any outdoor activity. When it gets windy you can cinch it down and change the size with the bungie cord in the hatband. A great product but then it's Columbia. Enough said!

Overall, I really like this hat. It works very well for providing shade, and is comfortable. My only wish is that the brim had a little more rigidity to it. When the hat first arrived, it had been folded so that the brim in front of my eyes flopped down and blocked my vision. Fortunately, this hat doesn't "remember" folds and bends very long. That said, the brim does droop a lot. On the plus side, it can be stuffed into a bag with no concern.

As fish biologists, we're in the field constantly and often in direct sunlight and during long hot summer days. We've have chosen the Bora Bora II Booney as one of two standard hats issued to our field crews to protect them from the sun while being light enough to keep their heads comfortable. The hat is very popular with our crews and I recommend it for anyone spending time in the field. Excellent product.

This is a nice, light weight and pack-able hat to keep the sun off your noggin. The mesh vent does allow cooling. The brim is wide enough to keep the sun off your ears and face. I do have two criticisms, however. The brim could stand to be sturdier, as others have noted. That relates to my second criticism, which is the brim flops down around the ears when the bungee cord is pulled to reduce the size. I tried to snug down my hat and the more I pulled to more the side brim fell. If your hat size is less than 7.5 or so, you might notice this flaw when you tighten it. This appears to be caused by the bungee being anchored halfway around each side of the hat.

As an avid kayak fisherman, I need as much protection as possible from the South Florida sun. I typically wear a baseball cap with a buff but it isn't always comfortable to wear the buff all day. So I was looking for something with a brim to keep the sun off my face, and especially my ears. This Booney is perfect for the job.

It is super lightweight and very comfortable and I had no problem wearing it all day. When the sun gets really hot, I can poor some cold water on it without it getting heavy and soggy. I love it.

This hat is annoying because there's no way to anchor the chin strap inside the hat when it's not in use. Most hats like this one have a Velcro tab or elastic loop to hole it in place. But Columbia wanted to save a couple cents on each hats and we're left with fumbling each time we put it on to keep it from dangling out the back or in front of our eyes.

The hat is crappy because the first time you get it wet the brim loses all its shape. From then on it sags, limo as a dishrag, blocking your vision and making the hat unusable.

I really like this hat. It is a replacement for a Boonie I lost. This hat is very lightweight and cool but durable. My biggest complaint is the same as others, the brim is too flimsy/floppy. With a slight bit of stiffening to the brim this hat would be perfect. That factor causes me to give my rating of 4 rather than 5.

I had been wearing a fedora made from paper braid. But, it was making my head too hot, so I was shown this hat and bought it. I like the nice wide brim. It does a better job shading my eyes. I thought with the mesh ventilation panel that it would help keep my head cool. It doesn't. The hat is made of 100% polyester. Polyester has a tendency to hold the heat in rather than let it escape. However, I'm not sure if putting the mesh panel on the top of the hat would accomplish that.

Since, I got tired of having sweat drip in my eyes, I had to buy a band to wear under the hat. The band helps to soak up the sweat. It would have been nice if this hat had that feature built in.

Overall, though, it is a nice hat and I'm really glad that I have it.

This is the 2nd hat I have purchased in this style. I am outdoors everyday teaching PE and it really protects my face and neck from the sun.
The reason for the 3 stars is the method used to ship this one. My first hat was shipped flat. There was no problem with the brim. The brim naturally gets a little floppy in a cute way. This one was shipped folded on 2 sides of the brim in a rectangular shape. When I saw how it was shipped I was concerned because when I put it on the brim hung horribly like a box on my head. I tried putting heavy things on it to re shape it, I tried washing it and putting weight on it to flatten it, I washed it many times. It is a little better but it still hangs horribly. I am wearing it a lot hoping to wear it out.
Please make sure that your hats are shipped flat.
Thank you.