The Best Enduro Mountain Bike Helmets

At roughly 740 grams, this is one of the lightest certified full-face helmets you can buy. That number matters more than it sounds. A heavy lid tugs on your neck over a two-hour climb, and neck fatigue is exactly why people end up with the full-face strapped to their pack instead of their head. This one is light enough that you'll just wear it, which is the whole point.

Fox cut down the surface area that touches your head and opened the vents so air moves across your scalp instead of around it. Published reviews put the Proframe RS near the top of the field for airflow among one-piece full-faces. It's still not an open-face trail helmet — nothing with a chin bar is — but on a rolling stage with any speed at all, you'll stay reasonably cool.

The MIPS Integra Split liner is the biggest reason we'd take this over an older full-face design. It pairs a softer EPP layer with the usual EPS to handle both low-speed and high-speed hits, and the MIPS layer is there for oblique impacts, the kind where your head twists as it slides. Virginia Tech's helmet lab found MIPS-equipped helmets cut rotational acceleration to the brain by an average of 42 percent versus non-MIPS versions.

The small stuff is done well. The BOA dial tightens one-handed, and the Fidlock buckle closes with thick gloves on and one hand busy holding your goggles. The visor moves through three positions, so you can park your goggles up top on a climb. There's a breakaway GoPro mount under the visor, and the Ionic+ liner and cheek pads keep the smell down between washes.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It's one of the more expensive helmets in this guide, and the chin bar doesn't come off. If your riding is half mellow trail and half shuttle laps, you're either carrying a second helmet or sweating through the flat sections.

The cheek pads are tight out of the box. That's how a full-face is supposed to fit, but it's a real adjustment if you're coming from an open-face, and it takes a few rides before you stop noticing the pressure on your jaw. Hearing is muffled too, which is worth knowing before you ride somewhere with hikers and blind corners.

Climb a fire road in the middle of the day wearing a full-face and you learn quickly which helmets actually breathe. The Stage has 25 intake and exhaust ports, and independent airflow comparisons have found well-vented enduro designs like this moving roughly 30 percent more air than traditional full-face shells. If your local trails are hot and your stages are long, this is the helmet to start with.

At about 690 grams, it's lighter than our top pick and lighter than most of what's out there. Troy Lee got there with a polyacrylite-injected chin bar and an internal EXO-Skeleton reinforcement rather than by thinning out the shell. The visor screws are designed to break away in a crash instead of catching. It reads like a race helmet because it is one — the Stage shows up a lot at enduro races.

Inside, the impact package is MIPS plus two foam densities: EPP for the slow, dumb crashes and EPS for the fast ones. Those are different problems, and a single foam density compromises on both. Pair that with the extended rear coverage of a full-face shell and you're protecting the areas that actually get hit when you go over the bars on a rocky chute.

The included fit kit is more useful than it sounds. Two crown liners, three cheek pad thicknesses and two neck rolls let you tighten the fit around your jaw without cranking a dial into your temples. A full-face should hold your cheeks firmly enough that the helmet doesn't rotate. Getting there usually means swapping pads, and here you don't have to order them separately.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

There's no removable chin bar, so this is a commitment. Buy it knowing you'll wear it on climbs or carry it on your back.

It's near the top of the price range here, and swapping cheek pads is fiddly work the first time. Expect to spend an evening with the fit kit before your first ride rather than pulling it out of the box and heading to the trailhead.

The Stage comes with a three-year limited manufacturer warranty.

At roughly 595 grams, this is the lightest helmet in the guide, and it costs a fraction of what the race helmets do. iXS gets there with an all-in-one construction: the chin bar and EPS liner are molded as a single piece rather than bonded together. Less hardware, less overlap, less weight. For a first full-face, that combination of light and cheap is hard to argue with.

The certification list is the real story. It meets EN 1078, CPSC, ASTM F1952-15 and F1446-15b. That F1952 mark is the enduro and downhill standard, and helmets carrying it have to survive impacts about 35 percent more severe than the CPSC bicycle standard requires. Plenty of cheaper full-faces skip it. Don't buy one that does.

MIPS is included, which we'd consider non-negotiable at any price now. Research on real-world crash simulations has put the concussion-risk reduction from rotational systems in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 percent, and that's a bigger safety gain than anything else you can add for the money.

The Ergo-Fit Ultra system adjusts both circumference and height, so you can raise or lower the cradle at the back of your skull instead of just cinching it tighter. That's genuinely useful if you're between sizes or have a head shape that fights most helmets. The closure is magnetic, and the two-position visor is cut to park goggles.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It doesn't move as much air as the Stage or the Proframe RS. On a hot, slow climb you'll notice the difference, and this is a helmet you'll want to take off at the top of the fire road.

The padding and liner materials are basic compared with what the pricier helmets use. They do the job, but they hold sweat longer and the overall finish is plainer. And because the shell and chin bar are one molded piece, there's no version of this that converts to an open-face helmet.

You ride up with the chin bar strapped to your pack, then clip it on at the top of the stage. That's the pitch, and for riders who alternate between long trail days and bike park laps it's a good one. One helmet, two jobs, no second purchase. The attachment is quick enough that you'll actually bother doing it rather than talking yourself out of the bar.

Bell says the Super DH meets both ASTM F1952 and CE EN 1078 with the chin bar installed, making it one of the few convertibles to hold dual certification. That's the part most detachable-chin-bar helmets get wrong. A bar that clips on for looks isn't protection. This one is designed as a wraparound structure, and it's certified to the downhill and enduro standard when it's attached.

The Flex Spherical system pairs with MIPS to handle high-speed hits, low-speed hits and the rotational forces in between, and Bell layers EPS foam in varying densities rather than one uniform block. Ventilation is strong for a convertible: 19 vents, two brow ports and four more in the chin bar, with overbrow intakes that pull air through the channels rather than letting it stall.

Comfort details are thought through. The X-Static and XT2 padding dries fast, and the Sweat Guide pad routes moisture away from your brow and off your glasses instead of onto the lenses. The Float Fit DH cradle uses a rubberized dial you can turn with gloves, closes with a Fidlock buckle, and the GoggleGuide visor adjusts to park goggles up top.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It's heavier than a dedicated full-face like the Stage or the Proframe RS, which is the tax you pay for a shell that has to work both ways. It's also expensive.

The detached chin bar is one more thing to carry, and one more thing to leave on a tailgate. In open-face mode the helmet is noticeably bulkier than a purpose-built trail lid, so if most of your riding is mellow singletrack, you may end up wanting a lighter everyday helmet anyway.