Abus’s Moventor 2.0 MIPS helmet is a good-looking helmet that offers more coverage than a traditional cross-country helmet. It features excellent levels of construction and finish and has a lightweight discrete Mips liner, a widely adjustable visor, 19 vents, and is pretty light at 342g. It’s also upgradeable with the Quinn crash alert system from Abus.
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Abus Moventor 2.0 MIPS – Technical details
The Abus Moventor 2.0 is described as an all-mountain helmet but clearly, that might stretch its use a little as you’d need an open face for a lot of all-mountain riding, if not a full face for the really fast technical DH trails. Perhaps a better description and one that Abus also uses for this helmet is ‘downcountry’ which is aggressive cross-country trail riding and likely to be what a lot of riders would recognize as doing. As long as you are not looking to use it in red “bike park” trails then the Moventor 2.0 will be perfect.
What is certain is that Abus Moventor 2.0 is a very smart and well-made helmet with a multi-shell construction process that sandwiches the outer shell of the helmet from multiple directions creating perfect fit lines that permanently bond the inner shock-absorbing EPS material in place.
All sections and edges of the helmet are smooth and perfectly finished whether it is the gloss black section around the lower edge, or where the straps exit the EPS shell, to the top of the shell where the EPS foam is visible inside the vents.
Talking of vents, there are 19 of them, 10 to allow cooling air to flow in and nine acting as exit ports to help get rid of all the heat developed whilst riding. At the rear of the helmet, there are two reflective strips on either side of a rubber bung labelled Quinn. This version of the helmet is not ‘smart’ but you can buy that Quinn module and pop it in this port later if you decide that you like the features it offers.
Inside the helmet gone is the fluoro yellow Mips liner of old and in its place, we have a black slimline Mips cradle that’s perfectly in line with the inner venting and air channels of the helmet. Only the location mounts for the liner are yellow in a nod to Mips’ signature colour. The padding is of course removable for washing purposes.
The inner cradle is quickly adjustable for sizing via a rotary dial and is also height-adjustable for comfort around the occipital lobe. The Moventor is also ponytail-friendly for those who are looking for that feature. The strap buckle is a standard double squeeze option as used across the board for the majority of helmets and the straps are held in an adjustable yoke which Abus calls the TriVider. There is a strap keeper to stop the end from flapping, completing the lid.
The Moventor 2.0 Mips costs £125 and comes in three sizes to accommodate heads from 51-61cm and in two colours in the UK; Matt Black and Grey.
Abus Moventor 2.0 Mips – Performance
Straight out of the box and on your head it feels light for an all-mountain bike helmet. It actually looks svelte as well, almost too small compared to many of the other all-mountain helmets we’ve been testing. Perhaps that is because it’s designed as a ‘downcountry’ helmet meaning it has a lot more coverage at the rear than a road helmet with a peak (i.e. traditional cross-country helmet design) but not as much as an open-face helmet like Abus’s own excellent Cliffhanger. Interestingly it weighs 342g versus the Cliffhangers’ 356g (size for size) so it’s all about the design not the volume of EPS and shell.
Abus has fitted a Mips liner to this version of the Moventor 2.0 for extra protection (there are two other versions available, without Mips and with Mips and Quinn). Mips has become synonymous with added safety in helmets and it works by offering a thin plastic liner that is fixed in four places inside the helmet and can slip a little inside the helmet when you shuffle it with your hand. When you crash and hit your head the liner slides between your head and the helmet reducing the initial rotational impact force being transferred to your brain providing you with a better chance of walking away unscathed.
It’s a hot topic of conversation for helmet manufacturers and is by no means the only system to claim improved safety, but it is by far the most widely used by helmet manufacturers. If you wish to know more about Mips have a read of our article ‘What is a Mips helmet?‘.
I found The Moventor 2.0 Mips to be a very good standard fit for my head shape in the medium review sample which claims a fit range of 54-58cm (I have a 57cm head) and required only a small amount of adjustment to stay put. The rear cradle is height adjustable whilst wearing the helmet and is in fact one of the easiest I have come across to do so. This improves the speed of fitting the helmet no end and gets you out on the trail as quickly as possible.
The straps appear to be fixed within the under-ear TriVider hanger but are in fact laterally adjustable. I did not need to adjust them, but playing with them to see how it would be done showed it to be a fairly difficult and fiddly task, definitely not a quick job. Once in the correct position though the straps do not move inside the TriVider which is a blessing. The under-chin buckle is the basic common version found on almost all helmets and there is a strap keeper for any loose end which has a spotted grip section on one side to help it stay in place. Clever.
When riding at a sensible speed airflow into the front of the helmet is just about detectable, but as you pick up speed the airflow is really noticeable and does its best to keep your head cool, in fact, the helmet is great at these higher speeds, however, when you are working up a sweat at much lower speeds, winching up steep forested trails it doesn’t appear to be quite as effective at getting rid of your excess heat as the Koroyd system as used by Endura’s MT500 or Smith’s Forefront 2 helmet for removing unwanted head heat at slow speeds. Mostly it’s very good as long as you keep moving, but if you tend to get hot easily or do a lot of low-speed hard-effort riding it might not be as cool as some other designs.
The Moventor 2.0 is also ‘smart’ upgradeable in that you can add a Quinn crash detection system unit into the little port on the rear for around £60. If you ride alone a lot or are often on big routes separated from your mates and you crash then the Quinn system will detect the crash, alert your chosen contacts, and provide a GPS location for them to find you. Having crashed alone and knocked myself out, this is exactly the type of system that I need to use. There are third-party crash detection devices on the market, like the one from Tocsen, however adding the Quinn system is neat, simple, and undetectable from the outside.
Mountain bike helmet peaks are designed to sit at a wide range of angles to allow for better visibility or shade from the sun, better airflow, and a place to store goggles or sunglasses when not in use. The Moventor 2.0 peak is no different moving up and down with total ease and has 4 positions from low sun visor to very high and out the way for when you wish to put your goggles on the front of your helmet.
The little spoiler on top of the rear helmet is there to reduce the rounded rear look of the design, and in that regard is effective, it also had a habit of collecting tree foliage when riding along leafy trails due to the front points of the spoiler being a little raised above the top of the helmet. It’s not an issue other than making me look like I’m doing some form of military camouflage exercise and causing amusement for other riders.
Abus Moventor 2.0 Mips – Verdict
At £125 the Moventor 2.0 Mips has a lot of competition in a very crowded market and whilst it’s listed as an all-mountain helmet Abus also calls it a downcountry helmet so which is it, and does it matter? The answer to the former is who knows and the latter is not at all. Wear what you feel comfortable in, not what the label says it is.
Other all-mountain and cross-country helmets worth a look at are Scott’s Tago Plus helmet which is partially made from recycled materials and offers good coverage in a wide range of colours and sizes for £120. MET’s Valeno MIPS helmet is definitely more of a cross-country helmet with 26 vents and weighs just over 300g but still features MIPS and a visor. Then there are Lazer’s Coyote Kinetic Core and Leatt’s AllMtn 1.0 all-mountain designs at £80 and £70 respectively, both with their own increased crash protection system if money is a little tighter
Overall the ABUS Moventor 2.0 Mips it’s a really comfortable easily adjustable well-ventilated helmet that offers high levels of construction and protection from both its EPS multishell design and its Mips liner. It is well-ventilated as long as you are moving quickly and if you fancy the option of a crash detection alert system you can just plug in a Quin unit and carry on riding. A good-looking slimline all-mountain helmet.
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Product purpose:
Like its predecessor, the Moventor 2.0 is an all-mountain helmet. The MIPS version has additional impact protection integrated into the helmet. This feature provides even better protection for the heads of adventurous mountain bikers.
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Product likes:
visor
adjustments are easy
MIPS
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Not the best vented when moving slowly.
