The best full-face mountain bike helmets will give you the protection needed to tackle extreme downhill and enduro trails.
Our team of dedicated testers have reviewed countless full-face helmets over the past 17 years, assessing the helmets in real-world conditions and considering factors such as safety, comfort, fit and ventilation.
Following our latest testing of the Bell Sanction 2 DLX MIPS and Abus HiDrop, we’ve compiled our top picks of the best full-face mountain bike helmets. Below our recommendations, you can find our buyer's guide, which explains all you need to know about full-face MTB helmets.
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Best full-face mountain bike helmets 2025
Bell Full-10 Spherical
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- £580 / $650 as tested
- Pros: Impressively comfy; feature-packed; great breathability
- Cons: Pricey; still gets hot
Bell's flagship Full-10 Spherical offers great comfort thanks to well-considered padding that has a soft-touch feel.
It features the MIPS Spherical system, which works like a ball and socket joint and consists of inner and outer EPS shells that are connected using small elastomers.
The helmet has impressive ventilation considering its downhill application, with the large exhaust vents at the rear sucking warm air away from your head.
Despite this, it still heats up when you're working hard.
We found the Full-10 to balance weight, coverage, fit, feel and comfort incredibly well, meaning it can be worn for hours on end without feeling cumbersome or irritating.
It is on the pricey side, but neat features and a lightweight carbon fibre construction go some way to justifying this.
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Bell Super DH MIPS
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- £319.99 as tested
- Pros: Decent venting; high comfort levels; secure open-face mode
- Cons: Thin strap
Bell’s Super DH feels like a full-on downhill full-face, with firm padding, but also offers plenty of breathability.
It’s packed with safety tech and uses the latest MIPS Spherical brain-protecting technology, and is DH-certified.
We found it comfortable, with the venting in its full-face configuration bearable for the majority of riding.
The chin bar is light and small enough to be clipped onto a pack without any trouble, and fixes onto the open-face lid easily enough.
It’s worth taking the Super DH off your head to fit the chin bar, because we found it difficult otherwise.
The thin strap can also tangle easily, which makes lining up the Fidlock buckle tricky, especially if you’re wearing a pair of the best mountain bike gloves or have cold hands.
It also sits quite close to your neck, so we’d like to see a bit of extra padding to boost comfort further.
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Giro Switchblade MIPS
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- £274.99 / $279.95 as tested
- Pros: Solid construction; confidence-inspiring; good comfort
- Cons: Not the most breathable with chin-bar attached
Giro's Switchblade MIPS inspires similar confidence as a designated full-face helmet with a snug and comfortable fit.
The double D-ring closure and padded strap feel very secure, albeit they are slightly slower to buckle than Fidlock-equipped helmets.
Its small chin-bar makes carrying easy and it’ll fit inside a pack with no problems
The large coverage of the Switchblade affects its breathability, with our tester working up quite the sweat on long climbs.
They also noted the big adjuster wheel could be felt at the base of the neck at extreme angles, and we’d like a more positive click from the chin bar on engagement.
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Smith Mainline
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- £275 / $300 / €300 as tested
- Pros: Decent breathability; good safety features; secure-feeling
- Cons: Could be lighter
Smith's Mainline helmet is downhill-certified, meaning it can be used for multiple disciplines, including enduro and downhill, which goes some way to justifying its price tag.
MIPS features and there's a D-ring closure for added security.
While this takes a little longer to fasten than magnetic designs, it improves comfort thanks to the wide straps.
Open vents around the chin bar keep the Mainline from feeling claustrophobic when you’re breathing hard on climbs.
We found it a little heavy at 830g for a size medium, although this doesn't take away from the helmet's comfort.
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Specialized Gambit
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- £295 / $300 / €350 / AU$480 as tested
- Pros: Great comfort; DH-certified; lightweight
- Cons: Expensive; cheek-pad mounts could be more reinforced
Specialized's Gambit uses a carbon fibre construction that sees a medium-sized helmet tipping the scales at a featherweight 627g.
The helmet is DH-certified and offers plenty of adjustability, which our tester found resulted in an incredibly comfortable fit.
Large vents at the front allow plenty of air to enter the helmet, and cleverly designed exhausts on the rear enable the warm air to escape.
The cheek-pad mounts are tricky to clip the pad into and would sometimes work loose, although once they were set up, they posed no further issues.
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Troy Lee Designs D4
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- £500 as tested
- Pros: Comfortable for long rides; impressive breathability; good looks
- Cons: Pricey; chin strap frayed after a couple of months
TLD's D4 offers impressive comfort thanks to well-proportioned padding and plenty of vents.
The helmet offers good levels of protection, combining TeXtreme carbon, uni-directional carbon, polycarbonate, EPS and a MIPS liner to boot.
This use of carbon fibre sees the D4 weighing only 960g in a size medium.
We found the D4 to remain comfortable on longer rides and were impressed by the cooling ventilation of the helmet despite the levels of protection.
The snug fit keeps the helmet in place on rough sections and it is fastened by a D-ring.
We had issues with the D-ring causing the straps to fray, although we were reassured by TLD that this was due to us testing an early media sample.
It is on the expensive end of the scale, but its performance, protection and use of lightweight materials go some way to justifying the asking price.
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Bell Sanction 2 DLX MIPS
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- £179.99 as tested
- Pros: Well-priced; reassuring fit; top-of-the-range features
- Cons: Could be more breathable
The Sanction 2 DLX MIPS has a lot of the same tech as Bell’s Full-10 Spherical helmet, but sits at the lower end of the price range. This includes Ionic+ antimicrobial padding and a hefty amount of styling cues.
While not sharing the Spherical impact protection, it still features MIPS, which should help to reduce rotational forces when hitting the deck.
A secure fit is achieved with large Velcro-backed cheek pads that can be moved around the shell of the helmet to relieve pressure.
Screws on the temples hold the visor in place and can be tightened to keep it fixed, or removed if you want to run the squid-lid look.
The helmet is optimised for goggles, with plenty of space in the cut-out to not press them into your nose, and under the peak for storage.
We found the helmet to vent surprisingly well considering its protection level, with large exhaust vents on the rear helping to bring air through the helmet to prevent heat build-up.
While this didn’t stop us from taking it off on fire-road climbs, it made summer trail riding bearable.
The Fidlock magnetic buckle makes getting the helmet on and off a lot easier than a clip or D-ring solution, but it doesn't feel quite as secure.
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Leatt MTB 4.0 Enduro V21
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- £280 / $300 / €331 as tested
- Pros: Good-value; plenty of ventilation; well-considered features
- Cons: Slight ear rub; chin bar could be easier to install
Leatt's convertible helmet packs in lots of features, with a deep design that offers good coverage around the back of the skull.
The brand uses its own 360 Turbine Technology in place of MIPS, which is claimed to provide anti-rotational protection while helping to absorb straight-on impacts.
We found the internal pads to be a good shape, offering a reassuringly secure fit, and were particularly impressed by the ventilation, with plenty of big vents in the top half of the helmet.
Unfortunately, we found the height-adjustable cradle dug into our ears at times.
The helmet is also a little heavy, at 850g, with the chin-bar attached for our size-medium helmet or 501g in its half-shell guise.
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MET Parachute MCR
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- £300 as tested
- Pros: Robust and secure; chin bar is easy to install
- Cons: Helmet needs to be fully loosened to be taken off
The Parachute MCR has a solid feel and boasts plenty of protective features, such as MIPS and a Boa dial for secure fitting.
Attaching the chin bar is quick and hassle-free, and it can be removed or replaced without taking the whole helmet off.
As a full-face, the Parachute is confidence-inspiring and comfortable, and while airflow isn't the best, it provides no issues for a range of temperatures.
We found we had to loosen the Boa dial completely before taking the helmet off or putting it back on, otherwise, it can be an uncomfortable squeeze.
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Also consider...
The following full-face helmets scored fewer than four stars out of five, so we haven't included them in our main list.
Abus HiDrop
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- £180 as tested
- Pros: Comfortable; good breathability; DH-certification
- Cons: Not as feature-rich as others
The HiDrop is billed as a downhill, freeride and dirt-jump friendly lid by its makers, and the helmet complies with all EN1078 safety standards.
Overall comfort of the HiDrop is great, with the interior padding remaining comfortable and the cheek pads securing a good fit.
Large inlets on the front of the helmet allow air to enter over the top of your head before being exhausted through large vents at the rear.
This cooling effect impressed us, and we even managed to keep it off our handlebar when climbing back up fire roads.
We were less impressed by the non-adjustable visor, which provides little more than decoration.
There is enough room to store goggles beneath it, but Abus says its primary intent is to break off in the event of a crash to reduce neck strain.
Goggle compatibility is very good on the face, with the opening large enough for a variety of styles.
The omission of MIPS or other spherical technology is surprising in this price range, but it does make for a lightweight and noise-free experience.
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Sweet Protection Arbitrator
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- £309 as tested
- Pros: Feels like a dedicated full-face; comfortable on longer rides
- Cons: Weight is noticeable; chin bar could be easier to install
The Arbitrator has a robustness that would lead you to believe it's a dedicated full-face helmet in a blind test.
Its chin bar is easy to release, although the stiff locking clip at the rear takes some thumb strength to secure early on when reattaching the chin bar.
Sweet Protection includes a MIPS liner to protect against rotational impacts, although we found the venting of the helmet to be lacklustre, overheating when working hard, even in the open-face configuration.
The overall weight without the chin bar is really noticeable, although in the full-face configuration it feels okay.
We found we had to crank up the retention cradle to keep it secure when tackling rough trail sections.
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Who are full-face mountain bike helmets for?
Full-face mountain bike helmets provide enhanced protection for extreme mountain biking such as downhill racing.
Combining deep coverage at the back and sides of the head with a chin bar, these helmets are a great choice for riders who want maximum protection.
Until a few years ago, however, full-face helmets were heavy and warm. This meant they weren’t comfortable for longer rides involving climbing and were reserved for gravity riders using chairlifts or shuttles to reach the top of the trails.
Some riders, in the early days of enduro racing, even pedalled with two lids – a full-face for the descents and a half-shell for the climbs.
Fortunately, full-face helmets have come a long way since then and there are now multiple options on the market that both offer high levels of protection, and are light and breathable enough for a full day of riding.
How we test full-face mountain bike helmets
We test full-face mountain bike helmets out on the trails, taking in enduro and downhill descents, and long fire-road climbs.
Our testers spend hours identifying any benefits or drawbacks of a design and choose their recommendations based on first impressions, performance, functionality, comfort and value.
While many people might place their helmets on the bars for fire-road climbs, our testers persevere to assess the ventilation of the helmets.
Additional protective features, such as MIPS or its equivalents, are considered in our reviews, as well as any other brand claims.
Of course, if you have specific needs or features that you prioritise, you can find those in the pros and cons, as well as links to our full in-depth reviews.
We keep this list updated as and when we test new full-face helmets that score highly enough and remove old helmets once they stop being widely available from retailers.
What to look for in full-face mountain bike helmets
Safety standards and certifications
Safety is the main reason you’re purchasing a full-face helmet, so start by checking out the safety standards awarded to the helmet in question.
To ensure a helmet meets minimum safety requirements, look for certifications (such as the ASTM F1952 rating, which is specific for downhill-rated mountain bike helmets), which guarantee the helmet has passed rigorous impact tests and will provide the level of protection you need in case of a crash.
While all certified MTB helmets meet basic standards, some higher-end options may offer additional safety tech for enhanced protection. This includes MIPS (Multi-Directional Impact Protection System), which is claimed to enhance protection against rotational impacts.
Fit and comfort
It’s crucial to find the right-sized helmet because even the best full-face helmet won’t protect you as it should if it doesn’t fit properly.
All full-face helmets should have some room for adjustment, whether that’s in the form of an adjustable cradle system or interchangeable padding of different thicknesses.
Beyond the fit system, pay attention to pad thickness and material. Good-quality padding can make a huge difference in comfort during longer rides, while moisture-wicking fabrics help keep sweat at bay.
How should a full-face helmet fit?
A well-fitting full-face helmet should feel snug around your head, sitting firmly with minimal movement. It shouldn’t slide around or feel loose, but it also shouldn’t give you a headache.
Try gently shaking your head from side to side and nodding up and down. The helmet should stay in place without moving. If it shifts or feels loose, it’s too big. If it pinches or hurts, it’s too small.
Weight and breathability
Good ventilation is crucial if you plan on using your full-face helmet for longer rides, or ride in warmer climates. Look for helmets that feature a good ventilation system, including front and rear vents, and internal air channels to help air flow freely.
The weight of a full-face helmet will depend on its durability and construction materials. This is where you will have to find the balance between weight and protection that best suits your riding intentions.
Goggle compatibility
If you're using a full-face helmet, chances are you’ll be wearing goggles, so ensuring your helmet is compatible with your favorite pair is crucial.
A good full-face helmet should offer a goggle-friendly design, with enough space for goggles to sit securely without discomfort or risk of fogging. Some may even have an integrated clip at the back, to securely hold your goggle strap in place.
What about convertible helmets?
Convertible full-face helmets were born from the demands of enduro racing, where riders had to wear a full-face on the descents but were allowed to use a half-lid on the transitions between stages.
Some of the resulting helmets did a great job of delivering a two-in-one solution, and have become popular with trail and enduro riders who want to have the versatility of a removable chin bar. However, most enduro racers stuck with wearing a dedicated full-face design.
