Tie for Best MIPS Mountain Bike Helmet

Troy Lee Designs is a giant in the full face helmet industry, with a motocross background. TLD made a big splash in the half shell market with the Troy Lee Designs A1 helmet, and the Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS aims to take what made that helmet great and make it even better.

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See Our Best Open Face Mountain Bike Helmet Review HERE!

Coverage, Weight, and Ventilation

Few helmets strike as fine a balance in the holy trinity of coverage, weight, and ventilation as the Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS open face mountain bike helmet. In fact, the POC Tectal Race Spin only barely edges it with a marginally lower weight and slightly better coverage. The Troy Lee Designs A2 and POC Tectal Race Spin are also neck and neck when it comes to ventilation, being two of the coolest helmets in the entire test. If you were ever in doubt that more vents don’t necessarily equate to a cooler helmet, then look no further than the Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS, which uses 13 vents to keep your head cooler than some helmets with more than 20!

Safety Tech

The Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS uses the standard MIPS insert to provide protection against rotational impacts. However, similar to some of our other top picks, the Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS has its own, in house innovation to protect your brain. The A2 MIPS helmet adds a layer of EPP foam to the standard EPS foam that most helmets use. Unlike the 6D ATB 1t EVO trail helmet, which sets a softer inner layer and harder outer layer apart, the softer EPP and denser EPS foam of the Troy Lee Designs A2 are “co-molded” together. Still, the theory is the same. The softer foam should provide better protection for slower impacts, as well as bolster the harder foam to dissipate the force of harder impacts.

Other features

The retention system of the Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS is yet another strength. With the adjustment in both the front and rear of the helmet, you can adjust both how tight the A2 is on your head, and how low and snug it fits. This adds to the helmet’s already great coverage, for an open face mountain bike helmet.

The TLD A2 MIPS also features an X-Static padding system, which wicks away sweat and fights odor buildup.

The TLD A2 works very well with goggles, though it does not provide a dedicated goggle strap. However, the short visor of the Troy Lee Designs A2 offers only minimal adjustment, making it virtually impossible to store a pair of goggles under while climbing. Finally, be prepared for longer armed sunglasses to bump the frame of the TLD A2, as is the case with most high coverage helmets.

The TLD A2 MIPS is a stylish helmet. With Troy Lee Designs origins going back to custom paint jobs on motorcycle helmets, it should come as no surprise that the TLD A2 MIPS helmet offers as wide and stylish a range of color options as any helmet on our list, and would easily be our pick for the best looking high coverage open face mountain bike helmet on the list.

The Bottom Line

The Bottom Line on the Troy Lee Designs A2 MIPS mountain bike helmet is that it is an amazing all around helmet. There might not be one thing that blows you away, but it does virtually everything very well while having no glaring weaknesses, which can only be said for a handful of helmets on our list. In fact, we call it a tie for the best open face MIPS equipped mountain bike helmet, between the Troy Lee Designs A2 and Smith Forefront 2.

Finally, with prices between $105 and $179 (depending on color and size), it can be the cheapest of our favorite open face mountain bike helmets of 2020, if you choose a color scheme that is on sale.

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