I’ve had the opportunity to try out several helmet types for my e-scooter travels, so I figured I’d share my opinions about them.
Please keep in mind that I’m in no way well-oriented in the topic and I’ve only tried only one model of each helmet type.
Standard bike helmet
Tested model: Casco Activ 2
Lightweight, airy, and does not provide enough protection for faster rides in my opinion.
Full-face bike helmet
Tested model: Cratoni C-Maniac 2.0 MX
I like this helmet. It’s very light, but I feel decently safe. I’ll probably use this one in summers.
Motocross helmet
Tested model: Raven Airborne
This turned out to be my favourite so far for colder weather. I appreciate the modularity with the goggles (you can choose whatever goggles you prefer, and change various visor tints), it’s airy just abour the right level for temperatures around 10 °C (and I expect it to be fine for colder weather with balaclava).
I’ve got a small fogging issues with the goggles, even though I got a two-layer visor with anti-fogging features. However the fogging was occuring on the outside, so it was very easy to clean off.
Motorcycle helmet (flip-up)
Tested model: Crivit Flip-up Full Face Helmet (from Lidl)
This is the most ‘tanky’ helmet type I’ve tried out. When you close the vents, you don’t feel any air, which might be good for colder weather, but I feel it also disconnects me too much from the environment, I tend to ride faster and not enjoy the ride itself. Also, it muffles the sound way too much for my liking, to the point I have trouble understanding people next to me over it. The sound dampening might be necessary for the motorcycle, but e-scooters are not that loud and I don’t drive that fast.
Also, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with fogging, even though the helmet comes with a pinlock system. It was okay when I was not doing anything demanding, but as soon as I even tried to push the scooter and started breathing a bit more, the inside of the visor got fogged up quite a lot, and it was impossible to clean it off without putting the helmet off. I had to ride with the visor up, making myself vulnerable to various flying particles, branches, wind and such.
So for now, for the colder part of autumns, I’ll keep using the motocross helmet. I’m considering of selling this one altogether.
Audio solutions
When I was starting with e-scooters, I was wearing the standard bike helmet, which had no problem accommodating my Aftershokz bone conduction headphones. These headphones are the best solution for cycling in my opinion, as they provide clean enough sound without reducing your hearing of your surroundings.
However, I was not driving very fast then. In faster speeds, you get so much air noise that you don’t really understand anything from the bone conduction headphones. Also, the only type of the helmet that was compatible with the headphones was the standard bike one. While it was somewhat possible to put them on under the full face bike helmet, it was rather quite tedious and I wasn’t able to reach the controls.
For my flip-up motorcycle helmet, which was the second helmet I’ve got a cheapo bluetooth intercom system for helmets on Aliexpress:
This was the only model I’ve found that looked like it has decent controls and doesn’t have RGBs like a gamer keyboard. It got me good enough audio for the motorcycle helmet, however it maybe increased the disconnection from the environment. I’ll probably move it to my MX helmet to test it out, but for now I feel like I’ll be driving without the audio so I can focus and enjoy the ride itself more.