Best Bang For Your Buck

Kali Protectives does not get the name brand recognition or the advertising budget that many of the brands on our list enjoy. However, that doesn’t stop them from being on the cutting edge of helmet safety innovation. That safety innovation and the ability to package it in a budget-friendly helmet is what ranks the Kali Maya 2.0 as our co-top pick as the best open face mountain bike helmet for your money.

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See Our Best Open Face Mountain Bike Helmet Review HERE!

Coverage, Weight, and Ventilation

At 360g, the Kali Maya is a fairly light helmet, particularly for one at its price point. Furthermore, it also provides very good coverage for a budget, open face mountain bike helmet. While it might not provide the coverage of the POC Tectal or 6D ATB-1T EVO, the Kali Maya is about on par with the Leatt DBX 3.0 All Mountain helmet, in terms of temple coverage. It also provides coverage down low over the back of the skull, an area where many helmets fall short.

Like most helmets that do all of the above well and don’t cost an arm and a leg, the Kali Maya suffers a bit when it comes to ventilation. A quick look at its 12 vents makes it easy to see why it is not nearly as cool as the helmets like the POC Tectal Race Spin, or the Maya’s own sibling: the more expensive Kali Interceptor.

Safety Tech

If you want to make a great helmet at a bargain price, you have to skimp out on something. However, that something should never be safety. Apparently, the folks at Kali agree. The Kali Maya 2.0 comes with a set of safety features that is as impressive as just about any mountain bike helmet on our list.

The Kali Maya 2.0 features Kali’s own proprietary “Composite Fusion” system. Composite Fusion uses in-molding technology to merge the helmet’s EPS foam liner and shell together. This allows Kali to use a softer variant of EPS foam, complete with a pattern of cone-shaped crumple zones, to better dissipate impact.

Most companies would have been happy to stop here, or at best to throw a MIPS liner in for good measure. But not Kali. Instead, the Kali Maya 2.0 also comes with Kali’s LDL (Low Density Layer). This system is similar to Leatt’s Turbine technology and POC’s Spin technology. It focuses on protecting your head from both lower speed and rotational impacts. The LDL tech is essentially a series of gel pads placed strategically throughout the helmet. These pads are softer than even the softest eps foam, and Kali claims that they absorb an additional 30% of low G impacts. In addition to crushing to absorb low G impacts, they also rotate and sheer in order to better absorb rotational impacts.

With most of the same safety tech found in more expensive Kali Protectives helmets, the Kali Maya is an obvious choice for anyone looking for a budget mountain bike helmet that offers the best set of safety features on the market. In fact, we felt that the innovative safety solutions of the Kali Maya are on par with those of just about any helmet in our review.

Other features

The Kali Maya 2.0 features your standard chin strap buckle with the usual adjustments available for each ear. The system is not flashy, but it is tried and true and helps keep the cost down.

Unfortunately, the retention system is neither tried and true nor terribly easy to use, and that is the main thing that keeps the Kali Maya from being one of our top picks. Unlike most modern mountain bike helmets that use a single, rotating dial to adjust the retention system, the Kali Maya uses a two-hand pinch system.

It is not that it is terribly difficult to use, nor terribly ineffective. It is simply the fact that it requires two hands that holds it back. Many riders will adjust their helmets retention system over the course of a ride, and that is generally an easy enough task, requiring only one hand. However, to adjust the Kali Maya, you will either have to stop or do some hands-free riding.

Getting back to the positives, the Kali Maya features a “Flex-Moto” style visor, that is easily adjustable and can easily handle a pair of goggles.

The final “feature” of the Kali Maya 2.0 is really more a feature of Kali as a company and one that instantly made us raving fans. Most helmet manufacturers offer a 20-30% discount for crash replacement, should your helmet be crushed between your skull and the ground in the line of duty. However, Kali will provide you with a brand spanking new helmet, for only the cost of shipping, after you send them your old one in for inspection.

The Bottom Line

The Kali Maya Helmet Rocks. Seriously. We firmly believe that a helmet’s first and only purpose is to protect your head. And at ~ $100 the Kali Maya proves that this can be done for less than half of what some of the premium helmets on the market cost.

Granted, there are a few places where the helmet might feel inferior to its higher-end competitors, but safety is not one of them. Sure, we wish that the Kali Maya was a bit cooler. And, sure, we are not big fans of the two-handed retention system adjustment. However, at the end of the day, if you are buying a helmet and you have a hundred bucks, there is no helmet that we would recommend more highly than the Kali Maya 2.0.

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