Review - Bolle' Gets Serious About New Enduro Helmet - The Trackdown

August 16th, 2018 12:00am

Bolle' Gets Serious About NEW Trackdown Enduro Helmet

It seems that over the last 5-6 years every company has decided to make everything and that makes me nervous. But Bolle' is not one of those companies. they have been in the vision and head protection industry for decades. Their foray into helmets goes way back into the early days of snowboarding making their transition into the bike industry pretty much a no brainer and gave them a way better starting point than companies running out to china to get some basic molded helmet.

Bolle' has history of 130 years of development behind them. But that doesn't mean that they hit a homerun with their first bike line up of helmets approximately 7 years ago. Their initial helmets were solid offerings that met all the safety standards but stopped there.

Skipping ahead to 2018 - it’s a much different story. For 2018 Bolle' has continued to improve their helmet line-up look, fit and safety. This review focuses on the NEW Trackdown Enduro Helmet with MIPS.

Style: The trackdown shape has come into its own and checks all the boxes to get maximum style points. It has a small, but good color range in Matte black, Matt Navy blue (my favorite), Sweet Purple, and White that will match just about any kit out on the market. The only colors missing are red and green.

The helmet also sports what Bolle' calls a "sunglass garage" which sounds kind of funny but it actually quite functional in that it allows you to put the arms of your glasses inside two of the front vents quite securely - for those times you want to take your glasses off while riding or resting.

The helmet also has a removable visor.

bolle-black

Safety: In developing their helmet lineup, Bolle' has gotten on board by adopting some of the new protection technology. The high end version of the Trackdown incorporates MIPS technology along with their AVID Progressive EPS system. Now as you know, MIPS is a technology that is designed specifically to mitigate rotational impacts or non-direct impacts. Bolle's Avid Progressive EPS uses both low speed density and high-density EPS foam and their ventilation channels to mitigate both low speed and high-speed impacts.

Now you may be asking yourself, how do ventilation channels help? The answer is that during compression of an impact, the material being compressed needs to expand or squeeze out somewhere. The ventilation channels act as an expansion joint if you will, allowing the various EPS foams to compress and aid in the gradual deceleration and disbursements of the impact.

Let’s face it, when we crash, we want the best protection there is for our precious heads. The Trackdown with MIPS has it all.

Breathability: The Trackdown features 16 large vents that feed into the ventilation channels within the helmet. Living in Arizona where it gets darn hot in the summer, high breathing helmets are important here and while the Trackdown is not the coolest breathing helmet we have tried, it does a good job and is not detrimental to the riding experience.

Fit: When you are looking for a helmet. Fit is probably the most key feature there is. Finding the right shape helmet is important for several reasons, first, the right fitting helmet is going to provide you the most protection and get the most out of the technology. And second, if your helmet fits well, you will probably be more likely to wear it.

The Trackdown is a Mid-Oval shape (which is the most common head shape) with a click-to-fit 360-degree fitting system.
We probably have 6 different helmets hanging around the office and the Bolle' is by far the best fitting, most comfortable helmet we tried.
The click-fit-system wraps around your head perfectly.

Price: MSRP on the Bolle' Trackdown with MIPS is a very fairly priced $169 which is well worth a helmet with this much technology and protection. Other Bolle' MTB helmets start at just $119