God I hate product reviews.
Not because I think the concept of a product review is bad, but so many "reviews" online are just straight-up horseshit. They're either faked by using AI or aggregations of other reviews, done in a single day so you have no real experience with it, or written by folks who've never held any of the product's competitors before, meaning they have no real-world experience to rest on.
Real reviews take time. Thoughts require weeks if not months to formulate and coalesce. And if you're not doing that, you're not giving readers, viewers, or whatever Google's AI is snippeting a clear picture. That's why it's taken me months since receiving Bell's MIPS MX-9 Adventure DLX helmet at my doorstep a few months back to put forth my review of it.
Not only did I take my time, break the helmet in, compare it to my AGV AX9 and handful of moto helmets, but I took it on a gnarly mud-filled off-road ride with Royal Enfield, and then a 1,000-mile motorcycle rally through Wyoming, including a small 100-mile section of off-road. I sweated in it, I ate mud in it, and I put it to the test, apart from purposely crashing. Though I did that too, much to my knee and ankle's detriment.
What I can say after all that is it's a solid helmet that'll protect your head in the event of something not fun occurring. However, it has one glaring issue: there's no finger tab to raise your shield easily.
Let's start off with the good, though. For its intended use, the Bell MX-9 is fairly light. It feels good on your head and through both my off- and on-road escapades, my neck didn't get tired once. Even with the on-road portion of my Devilstone Run where the wind whipped as we FOLLOWED THE POSTED 80 MPH SPEED LIMITS, the visor didn't catch as bad as others, likely thanks to the big vents up top.
Likewise, it's pretty quiet. I tend to run either earplugs or headphones (if they're legal in that state) and even switching between the two, they didn't have much wind noise to compete with.
The shield is bright and big, giving you excellent visibility outward. This helped a ton during the Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 launch, where visibility was absolutely necessary for survival. Without good forward vision, you'd likely fail to see rocky obstacles, big jumps, or the countless mud puddles we traversed. And the shield itself wicked away water and mud fairly well, as only a few times did I have to physically wipe mud specks away with my fingers.
To that end, I also ran with both the shield up and down, favoring up while off-roading as even with all the venting included with this helmet in its design, it can get toasty if you're working hard off-road. It did, however, keep my forehead sweat at bay, nicely soaking it up. Whether it'd keep soaking all my sweat a year or two down the road, I'll have to get back to you on that. And for what it's worth, I worked my ass off during that Himmy ride. It was the gnarliest trail I've ever done and those tires weren't up for it, even though we made it through.
And though I fell over during that trip, I didn't hit my head. But I do think I experienced the MIPS technology if I'm being honest.
For those unfamiliar with MIPS, it's the latest and greatest helmet technology but essentially acts like suspension for your head. The internals shift with the impact instead of staying static, which supposedly reduces the possibility of traumatic brain injury.
Now, I've fallen a lot. You tend to do that when you both test motorcycles and do a lot of off-road riding. And I've fallen with both my moto helmets and my AGV. I've felt it stay stationary as I fell, and it's wobbled with me as my neck goes to and fro. With that in mind, you tend to hurt your neck. I didn't feel that with the Bell, though maybe I was focused on my ankle and knee hurting as badly as they did...
But again, there is an issue that Bell could easily solve and that's the lack of a finger tab on the MX-9's shield.
Without it being there, and unlike literally every other helmet sold today, it makes it so freakin' hard to lift the visor while you're moving. And the mechanism itself is pretty stiff, so you end up using both hands while rolling down the road or stopped at a stoplight to lift the damn thing up. It's not a deal breaker, but it's annoying and needs to be talked about so people are aware.
Please, Bell, fix this.
As for price, it's usually about $370 which is wildly reasonable in the adventure helmet market. But at the time of writing, Bell has it marked down to $277 and that's a deal and a half. Seriously, with three shell sizes, multiple colorways, a handful of visor options to pick from (though none have the tab), and all the normal internal sizes, it's a great adventure helmet.
It's definitely become my new go-to helmet and I'll bet it'd be yours too.
