Product review: Airoh Rev modular helmet

Despite their popularity, I’ve never been a fan of flip-up helmets. You know, the ones that pretend to be a full-face helmet when closed and then expose the rider to the elements when the chin bar is raised via a hinge system. As far as I’m concerned, hinges are for doors and gates, not helmets.

A raft of manufacturers make flip-up helmets that enable you to raise the chin bar to just above the eye port, but there’s only a handful of brands where the jaw piece swings right over the helmet so it rests at 180 degrees from where it started. For many years, Shark was one of the few brands offering this design but other players such as Airoh and LS2 have now joined the game.

I’d formed my unflattering opinion of flip-up helmets without ever having ridden with one, so I decided to get an Airoh Rev modular helmet on my noggin to find out if my views were justified.

Without doubt, this helmet is easiest to put on with the jaw piece open. With the front of the helmet open, there’s some flex in the cheek area of the Thermoplastic shell to spread the helmet and easily slide it on.

Every brand of flip helmet I’ve encountered, as a former accessories retailer, has this flex and while it’s always made me question the helmet’s safety it does make it easy to put on and even easier to reach inside the helmet and fold my ears back to their natural position.

Do everyone’s ears fold down when they put on a helmet or is it just my wing nuts?

Due to the mechanics of a flip-up helmet, they’re generally heavier than a standard lid. At around 1700 grams, the Airoh Rev is no lightweight but it’s hardly a behemoth either.

The advantage of modular lids like the Airoh is that because the chin bar can do a 180-degree rotation, the weight is kept low and close to the helmet instead of being high on your head like flip-up helmets that have a chin bar rotation of only 90 degrees or so.

Call it dumb luck, but the weight of the Airoh settled a stiff neck I’d been dealing with for a week.

A couple of design features that impressed me most relate to the opening of the external clear visor. Firstly, when you press the red lever on the front of the chin bar, the clear visor snaps straight into the fully opened position, ready for the chin bar to rotate without making any contact with the visor.

Then when you rotate the chin bar back to the full-face position, the clear visor automatically opens so the two components have clearance from each other. Other helmets in this category don’t have this feature and consequently damaged visors are a common complaint. The only way I could see the Airoh system being improved is if the main visor could be opened incrementally. As it is, the clear visor is either fully open or closed.

Having spent most of my road riding in a standard full-face helmet, without so much as an internal visor, I had a lot of functions to get used to with the Airoh.

As silly as it looked and as much as it made my seven-year-old daughter laugh, I made use of the bedroom mirror working out where the buttons were and what they did.

My pre-ride practise helped but it still took time on the bike and plenty of fumbling to find the levers to operate both visors and the jaw piece.

Using the levers with a gloved hand was easy, locating them is what takes practise. I expected the chin bar to lock down automatically when it rotated over and didn’t expect the clunk when it came to rest. With the seemingly unrestrained jaw piece on the back of my head I wondered if it would bounce around on bumpy roads

It took a neck-straining head bang (as though I was at an AC/DC gig) in front of the mirror to send it from the back to the front, hands-free. I tested the untethered jaw piece on the bumpiest section of local bitumen I know and didn’t notice the slightest movement.

It turns out I wasn’t using the helmet correctly in this situation as there’s a lever that locks the chin bar in the rear position.

It’s obvious the Airoh Rev was designed to be opened and closed while riding due to the location of the various buttons and levers that are either on the front of the chin bar or on the left side of the helmet.

Not that I’d recommend this, but I tried flipping the helmet open on the freeway, half expecting my head to get buffeted around as the wind caught the chin bar in mid rotation.

Even on my Yamaha FZ1N naked bike -- /bikes/yamaha/fz1n/ -- without a screen, the wind didn’t rock the helmet around at all. The Airoh feels slightly more aerodynamic in full-face mode, but it didn’t cause any issues at freeway speeds in the open-face mode either.

I’ve spent most of my riding with the Airoh Rev in Jet mode, that is with the jaw piece flipped over and with both visors down. The tinted internal visor sits well for me, dropping down low enough to block out the sun, without clouting me on the snout.

How the helmet sits on your head will determine how well the internal visor will be positioned for you, so it’s worth checking that out when you try one on for size.

My only gripe with the internal visor is the slightest distortion at the far corners that I sensed with my peripherals. The more I’ve ridden with the Airoh Rev, the less I’ve noticed it.

Dropping the main clear visor down in Jet mode stopped the wind from getting under the tinted visor and playing havoc with my eyes while looking through two visors didn’t create the visual distortion I anticipated.

I’m impressed with the width of vision from the Airoh and I found no hindrance when doing shoulder checks. In fact, with the chin bar raised I could see my shoulder whilst checking my blind spots. Should you ever need to replace the main clear visor you’ll be impressed with how easy it is to remove.

The Airoh’s side padding sits close and firm around my cheeks and ears, but I still experienced wind noise like I’d expect from a helmet with a moveable chin bar. Considering I ride a naked bike with zero wind protection, I think the Airoh performed well in terms of wind noise.

There was no whistling, just that general wind rush at speeds over 100km/h. At lower speeds I didn’t experience any more noise than I do in my Bell full-face helmet.

Like many flip helmets, the Rev is built for an intercom system with recesses in the EPS for speakers, holes in the lining where it sits against your ears, a small slot low on the left side of the shell for wiring and even a small retainer behind the left cheek pad to stop a boom mic from wobbling around while you ride.

Another nifty surprise beneath the liner is a spare wind deflector that mounts to the base of the chin bar. The helmet comes with a longer deflector for winter and a shorty for summer. The spare is tucked into the EPS so dig around for it if you end up with an Airoh Rev.

The lining is removable for fitting an intercom system and for washing. Unfortunately, it’s an all-in-one liner so I found it tedious to remove. Having separate cheek pads and a head liner is much easier to work with. The hypoallergenic liner is smooth to the touch and comfortable against the skin.

Intake vents are confined to one on the chin bar and one on top of the helmet. I couldn’t feel any air rushing past my sparse hair follicles until I dipped my head an inch which must have made for a better intake angle.

There’s a stylish spoiler on the back of the helmet for exhausting hot air, but overall, I wouldn’t describe the ventilation as fantastic. However, who needs the world’s best ventilation when you can split the helmet open and let a face-full of air rush in?

While I didn’t feel as safe as I do in a traditional full-face helmet, I did feel less vulnerable than wearing a standard open face. The sides of the helmet extend further forward and so my head felt more covered and enclosed.

Having said that, my safety conscious brain continued to remind me I was less protected than usual, so I’d bring the jaw piece back into play whenever I sensed the potential for danger.

Such times included following a car through roadworks where loose gravel could ping a tooth and through some of my favourite sections of twisting roads where my levels of enthusiasm and concentration tend to rise.

I had more fun testing this helmet than expected and it was quite a novelty to change its configuration on the fly. Despite how much I enjoyed the experience I can’t see sports bike riders flocking to flip-up helmets any time soon, but for riders who do lots of touring or commuting I can really appreciate the benefits.

Being able to completely open a helmet on a hot day to let more air in and being able to communicate easily with your riding mates is a genuine advantage. I also appreciated the heightened sense of freedom from opening the helmet on a country road, getting more air on my face and feeling just that bit closer to my surroundings.

For the right type of rider, the Airoh Rev makes a lot of sense, but for now I’m sticking to my full face.

For more info on Airoh Rev helmets and to find your closest stockist head to www.motonational.com.au.