Best Overall Lightweight Full Face Mountain Bike Helmet

A recent addition to the world of mountain bike helmets, Leatt mountain bike helmets now seem to be everywhere you look. They have a great entry in open face and full face helmet categories, and the DBX 3.0 Enduro helmet adds one to the convertible category as well. The Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro is a great option for a convertible helmet. It is essentially the Leatt DBX 4.0 with the chin bar attached, and the DBX 3.0 All Mountain without the chin bar.

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See Our Full Face Mountain Bike Helmet Breakdown and Comparison HERE!

Weight & Ventilation

The Leatt weighs in at ~375g without the chin bar, and ~750g when used as a full face helmet. This makes it an extremely attractive option for the gram counters and weight weenies among us.

The Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro helmet is also very well ventilated. Like its siblings, the DBX 40 and DBX 3.0 All Mountain, the Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro mountain bike helmet will keep you nice and cool whether you are wearing it open face pedaling up the hill or full face bombing down.

Chin Bar & Safety Tech

The Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro is a light, cool option for a convertible mountain bike helmet. However, it makes some sacrifices to get there. This is not a fully downhill certified helmet, like the Giro Switchblade and Bell Super DH. It feels lighter, and less substantial in your hands and on your head. That is especially true of the chin bar. The chin bar on the DBX 3.0 Enduro feels much flimsier than that of the Super DH, but it is its attachment points that were our biggest point of concern. It does not wrap fully around the helmet like the Bell Super DH or Super 3R, and it only uses two small buckles for attachments.

There were actually instances of these buckles failing without impact on the earliest models of the DBX 3.0 Enduro, but Leatt seems to have worked those issues out. However, the whole point of adding a chin bar to your helmet is to protect your face in the event of an impact with the ground. If you don’t trust the chin bar to do that, then it kind of defeats the purpose, and of all of the convertible helmets that we reviewed, the Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro has the chin bar that I trust the least.

The Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro mountain bike helmet also lacks the low G impact dissipating EPO foam that can be found on the Leatt 4.0 full face helmet.

However, the Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro still features Leatt’s Turbine technology, which we feel is among the best safety innovations currently on the market. Turbine tech is Leatt’s answer to MIPS in that it seeks to lessen rotational impacts. However, unlike MIPS, it also helps dissipate straight on impacts.

Turbine tech is made up of flexible, rotating, pads, placed strategically throughout Leatt helmets. Each “turbine” can flex and twist, allowing the helmet to rotate without exerting rotational forces on the rider’s head. They also crush to absorb impacts from whatever direction they come. In fact, Leatt claims that its patented Turbine technology reduces up to 30% of head impact at concussion level and up to 40% of rotational acceleration to the head and brain.

Visor & Additional Features

Fortunately, the Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro does feature an adjustable visor, unlike the full face DBX 4.0. And it is great at just about everything except goggle integration. While it works very well when you are wearing your goggles, you should probably plan to hang them on your neck while you climb, because the visor does not raise quite far enough to comfortably stow them underneath. On the flipside, sunglasses work very well with the helmet in open face mode.

The Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro mountain bike helmet utilizes the same solid retention system found on the 3.0 All Mountain. Also, like the 3.0 All Mountain, it features a magnetic Fidlock buckle but suffers from annoying strap adjustments that will irritate your ears if you don’t set them up just right.

The Bottom Line

The Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro helmet is yet another solid entry from Leatt. We were not terribly confident in the seemingly flimsy chin bar attachment points, and it is not a serious downhill helmet like the Bell Super DH or Giro Switchblade. However, it is a lightweight and extremely well-ventilated convertible mountain bike helmet. If you want a convertible mountain bike helmet for the safety of a chin bar on tamer terrain, rather than for bombing the bike park and double black diamond routes, then the Leatt DBX 3.0 Enduro helmet is a solid choice at $239.

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