The Best Mountain Bike Helmets (Review) in 2023 | Autance

We’ll kick off our list with this entry from Giro. If you’ve never heard of this company they are a helmet manufacturer with a very well earned reputation for producing quality items. This helmet, featuring and a new and improved fitting mechanism, is very much designed to keep up that tradition.

The fitting mechanism we described is called the Loc 5. First off all it is 40% lighter than the predecessor model, the Loc 4. It is a dial-controlled mechanism that makes use of multiple adjusting points within the helmet. This allows for an easy to operate custom fit and tension that keep the helmet secure and comfortable no matter the ride conditions.

Next up we’re going to take a look at an offering from another manufacturer with a very well regarded reputation for producing quality helmets. Fox MTB Helmets are well regarded especially by pro mountain bike riders, and you will see a lot of them at races wearing Fox manufactured equipment including helmets.

This is more of an everyday use design from Fox, missing the full-face protection that you would see on a racing helmet. As far as everyday wear goes however there is a high level of protection provided by this helmet. In particular this helmet has a very deep rear profile, providing more protection to the back of the skull than you will find on many contemporary Half Shell styles of design.

Smith Optics is a manufacturer better known for making snowboarding and skiing visors, glasses and helmets. What they have done here though is to take that knowledge and put it use in designing a pretty unique looking mountain biking helmet.

The key stand out feature that makes this helmet different is the Koroyd Tube Insulation used inside the helmet. These are tiny polymer tubes that provide the internal insulation and shock absorption – and they are very good at it too! Smith Optics calculate that they absorb up to 30% more impact energy than traditional EPS. That is very impressive!

Giro are back already with another helmet, this time featuring MIPS. This is a safety feature not found on all helmets, and is frankly one that some manufacturers are not convinced of. That being said, other helmet makers think it is an important safety feature and Giro is definitely one that falls into that camp.

MIPS stands for Multi-directional Impact Protection System. This means that an internal plastic liner is mounted inside the helmet where it sits close to your scalp. This provides a few millimeters of additional movement during a crash, which can help to protect against rotational brain injuries during an impact.

This is the first Bell bike helmet to make the list, and is also our first full-face helmet to make our list. This style of helmet is designed to provide maximum protection to all parts of the skull, especially the jaw and face.

Because of that full protection, these styles of helmets are much heavier than a Half Shell design. Bell have worked hard though to keep weight down, and with a total weight of 33.5 ounces, this is a helmet that provides excellent protection at a lower weight than many similar sized contemporary designs.

Lets take a look at the second Fox MTB helmet to make our list. Again, as you would expect from Fox this is a helmet very much designed with mountain biking in mind. This helmet is designed to provide a little more protection than the one we looked at previously from this manufacturer though, being a good middle ground between a lighter half shell and heavier full face helmet.

The big stand out is the Varizorb Multi-Density Impact Protection system. This use EPS foam insulation of varied densities, providing extra impact protection exactly where it is most needed. This has resulted in a slightly thicker EPS layer within the helmet. This could have made the helmet a bit hotter in use, but Fox have fought back against this by incorporating 10 extra deep ventilation ports.

Troy Lee Designs are the designer and manufacturer of this next cycle helmet that we’ll take a look at. It is certainly a very eye catching design, but this model is also packing a number of high-grade features.

First to note is that this model is the second style of mountain bike helmet to deploy MIPS in the design. As we discussed with the Giro model earlier (and we’ll get into more in our buying guide below) MIPS is not for everyone – but if it is something you are interested in, it is certainly deployed very well in this design here.

Another entry from Bell, and this bicycle helmet is very clearly designed with safety at the very forefront. As another full-face design, it is of course designed to provide maximum impact protection to as much of the head as possible.

More so than just the overall shape of the helmet though there are a number of excellent features to be found here. Bell have opted for a fusion in-mold polycarbonate shell here. This is designed to provide an excellent level of impact protection whilst keeping weight manageable.

This is another really cool bike helmet from Smith Optics. Just as we saw with the previous Smith Optics helmet design, this model comes with a Koroyd internal tubing style liner. Once again, this makes for a very high quality liner that provides excellent levels of rider ventilation.

EPS foam has been used in the internal liner of this helmet for impact protection. Smith Optics have chosen to go for a zonal impact protection system, designed to offer better protection where and when it is needed most.

We’ll finish up our list with this beast of a helmet from Giro. This is another full-face style of helmet and it is also equipped with MIPS. So if you are looking for a very high-grade helmet with a top level of protective performance, this could be the one for you.

It’s also very nice to see that the chin bar can be removed. For us, that is a very impressive design feature. You can keep the chin bar in place for a full-face level of protection. But then you can remove it and take it away, increasing the ventilation and airflow to help keep the rider cool.