Weight: 800g

Helmet Weight with Chin Bar: 1100g

Vents: 24 vents

Adjustable Visor: Yes

Price: $249.95

What We Like:  The best protection on the market without a chin bar, fully downhill certified

What We Don’t: Too hot and too heavy without the chin bar

Compare to Similar Products

See Our Convertible Mountain Bike Helmet Breakdown and Comparison HERE!

Weight & Ventilation

At over 1100 grams, the Giro Switchblade is not a light full face helmet. This is made worse by the fact that the bulk of the Switchblade’s weight comes from the helmet itself, which weighs over 800g without the chin bar, making for a very heavy open face helmet, nearly double the weight of the 6D Helmets ATB-1T EVO, which the heaviest helmet in our open face mountain bike helmet review.

Likewise, the Switchblade’s 20 vents do little to keep your head cool when the chin bar is removed. However, it is actually fairly well ventilated compared to other full-face helmets.

All of this relates to the fact that the Giro Switchblade is the only convertible mountain bike helmet to retain over the ear protection, sort of like an open face motorcycle helmet, when in open face mode. The reality is that most of what makes a full face helmet hot is not the chin bar. It is the extra material against your face, trapping heat in and keeping air from the surface of your skin.   There is just no way to overcome this from a weight or ventilation standpoint, and the Giro Switchblade suffers here because of it.

Chin Bar & Safety Tech

This also changes how the chin bar of the Giro Switchblade attaches, because it attaches to the cheeks of the helmet, rather than providing the cheeks of the helmet. Two buttons and a lift of the chin piece easily mounts or removes the Switchblade’s chin bar, making it the easiest to install or remove of any convertible mountain bike helmet on the market.

Like everything else about the Giro Switchblade, the chin bar is heavy duty, and mounts to the helmet via stainless steel hardware mounted directly inside of the EPS foam shell of the helmet.

The Giro Switchblade MIPS also uses the standard MIPS insert to protect against rotational impacts. While we think that the Switchblade could stand something a bit more innovative, like POC’s Spin tech or Bell’ MIPS Spherical, the Giro Switchblade still claims high marks for safety, owing mostly to its strange three quarter shell design.

Visor & Additional Features

Better still, Giro includes an extra visor with every Switchblade helmet, so you have a replacement on hand should it break. This is also where Giro’s camera mount is located, on the underside of the visor. This is innovative and unique, but it requires you to run your visor in a high position, in order to keep your camera from blocking your field of view.

The Switchblade also features an extremely effective and easy to use Roc Loc retention system.   In keeping with its heavy-duty nature, the Giro Switchblade utilizes a motorcycle style D-ring closure for the chin strap. While this is no doubt effective, it is much more of a pain to get on and off than traditional buckles and much more difficult than the Fidlock system found on most high-end helmets. This strap is also thickly padded, which is comfortable but adds to the hot-headed nature of the Giro Switchblade

The Bottom Line

The Switchblade occupies a very unique niche, but with convertible helmets like the Bell Super DH matching it for safety, and full-face helmets like the Leatt DBX4.0 providing lightweight and cool full face options, there is less room for a helmet like the Switchblade than their once was.

^ Back to Top ^