Our sport is pretty split over Mips. I mean, we all like what it does, or rather, what it claims to do, but for the haters out there, it makes the experience of wearing a helmet just a bit more unpleasant. Helmets are already a bit unpleasant. Disagree? Are you wearing one right now? I rest my case. Our heads used to touch nothing but a few light pads and a few small patches of insulating foam. Now there’s a head-hugging layer of plastic in there too, interrupting some of the ventilation that actually makes helmets less unpleasant. And beyond that, it allows for a kind of motion that reminds some of us how our helmets used to slide around before Giro invented the Roc Loc occipital-retention system.
So, Mips has evolved, much of that evolution coming from helmet brands themselves. Instead of inventing their own spin (pun intended) on angular-impact protection, Giro and adopted-sister-brand Bell are working within the Mips concept. The Bell Sixer uses the occipital retention system itself as a Mips liner. Then, the Bell Super DH and later the Giro Tyrant split the entire helmet in two concentric hemispheres and dubbed it Mips Spherical. But about two years ago, Giro introduced the Aether road helmet. It takes the Mips Spherical concept, but doesn’t extend the outer shell to cover the entire inner shell. Rather, it covers only the front, top and most of the back of the inner shell, where most impacts occur. Today, the Manifest Spherical brings that concept to the dirt.
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