Review: Oakley MOD5 MIPS Helmet
What we liked
Great adjustability for head and goggle fit
Adjustable ventilation
A solid choice for regular piste & side-country riding.
What we didn’t
Heavier and less well-vented than it’s lighter, more touring-oriented, sister model the MOD3 MIPS helmet.
That fiddly Fidlock buckle system
The Verdict
THE SHORT READ…
A super comfortable and good-looking helmet, with really good head-fit via the glove-friendly rear Boa and goggle/helmet-fit via an internal adjuster. It has a ventilation on/off slider to let some steam out on hot days but shut out storm winds if you are unlucky with the weather. Great for regular piste, slack- and side-country riding.
However, it is 140g heavier than it’s cheaper sister model, the excellent-for-touring MOD3 MIPS (click to see our review), and it’s contruction involves more plastic panels than the MOD3, which don’t always have a super tight fit together and so can be a bit ‘creaky’ when handled. Like the MOD3 it has the magnetic Fidlock buckle system, which we are yet to be convinced about.
THE LONG READ …
The Oakley MOD5 MIPS helmet has a few great features in it’s arsenal. We used it extensively during the 23/24 season - are still using it - and we generally love it, though it does have one aspect that causes us some frustration. Read to get the low-down.
MIPS - This is the new big-deal in helmets, whether in cycling, mountain sports or any other helmet application really. It’s basically a technology that allows the helmet to rotate a bit on your head under impacts, so that some of the force is directed away from it, or as Oakley say, “…a low-friction layer designed to decrease rotational motion to the brain, helping to reduce the harmful forces that might otherwise impact the wearer’s head.“. Sounds very good for your noggin, and is really quite unobtrusive - it doesn’t seem to obviously impact the fit, though MIPS helmets tend to look a little more ‘spherical’ in overall shape, to let that rotation happen.
Fit - Yeah, lovely. I mean, ok, I’ve got a relatively norma- shaped head I guess, in that no-one goes around calling me ‘pin-head’ or ‘flat-head’ or such. Oakley’s sizing charts seemed bang on when I chose the Medium, and I when I dropped it on the first time, it just felt.. great. An instant feeling of security and comfort. And it still feels like that. Nicely cushioned, no slop in any particular direction, including rotation. Also:
The BOA dial at the back is easily operated with gloves on - dial that baby in and it really secures the helmet nice and snugly under the rear of your head.
Goggle/helmet interface position adjuster (which is, er, my own terminology for this particular thingy…) - Now I know we all think that manufacturers who make both helmets and goggles try to make it so you can only use their own helmets and goggles together, if you want to get a nice fit between top of goggles and helmet at the front, right?
and Oakley do say the helmet is ‘optimised’ for Oakley goggles, but firstly, the underside of the helmet is perfectly flat above your goggles, so any flat-topped goggles will work here.
And secondly, to help make different sized goggles and faces work with this helmet, it includes a nice internal adjustment mechanism inside that allows the position of the Boa under the back of your head to be adjusted up or down a little, which effectively lifts or drops the vertical position of the front of the helmet where it meets the goggles - when I first put my Smith googles on with these, the helmet pushed those goggles down too hard on my nose, but using this adjuster, I was able to pull the front of the helmet up a little. Now I’ve no gap between goggle and helmet and the goggles are in the right place on my face.
There are only 3 positions but this was sufficient in my case.
Weight - The MOD5 MIPS in Medium comes in at 638g, compared to the 498g for the MOD3. This puts it into the ‘I know something is on my head’ territory, instead of the MOD3’s ‘Its barely there’ territory. For long days on the hill, those few extra grams could well be noticeable.
Lining - The Polartech inner lining is removable for washing, well vented to let steam out, but also warming when you need that.
Ventilation - Just like in the MOD3, this comes in a couple of forms on the MOD5:
On the top of the helmet is a slider that allows or cuts off airflow through 2 x 4 cm long slots, and 1 x 6cm cross-wise slot, on the top of the lid. Slide forward - shut off the flow; Slide back, let your brain cool down a bit. You can have it part-way as well.
The MOD3s 22 holes are more evenly spread across a larger area so the MOD5’s airflow will give you more of a ‘blast’ of cold air down into each of those 3 slots, but there are channels under those vents to let that blast spread out, and the mesh of the inner liner will also help diffuse the cold air. And probably, for most of us, we’d not notice any difference from the MOD3 in how hot air gets released, if wearing it on a hot day. Still, we prefer the idea of the MOD3’s more distributed venting.
On some colourways, the top venting panel is a highly shiny black plastic panel, that will inevitably get scuffed over time. On other colourways it’s matt.
There is also a front goggle air intake port, which you can’t close off, which lets a bit of airflow down into the top of the google, to help prevent fogging up. This is great if you have a good tight fit between top of the goggles and underside of helmet.
Buckle - This, for us, is the less successful part of the design. Fidlock is used by other manufacturers as well, but honestly, I don’t think it works nearly as well as the old style male/female click-together simple plastic buckle system thats been around for years.
It’s magnetized, so the idea is that you get the two bits in close proximity to each other and they just click together from almost any angle. And do it in your hands, while looking at it with the helmet off, and they do exactly that.
But, when you try it with gloves on, when it’s under your chin and you can’t see where the two bits are relative to each other, it becomes - for me anyway - remarkably difficult to get those two ends to snap together! I end up trying like half a dozen times, with increasing bursts of profanity each time until I eventually get it. And they are heavier than those old style buckles.
We remain unconvinced.
For the buckle strap, Oakley have provided a very short and light bit of padding under your chin. Minimal, but it works well enough. The buckle strap is quite long and for smaller heads, there can be quite a bit of excess that can flap around. The loose end actually does have a silicon band attached to that goes around the main strap and you can slide that band up quite high up alongside the ear flap - I’m not sure that’s intended, but it works - and thus taughtens the excess.
Ear flaps - Removable, which is great. And interestingly those flaps are hollow inside. That is, your ear kind of sits inside a well-cushioned “cup”. I initially thought this wouldn’t be warm enough, but it is, and I think it helps you hear better what’s going on around you, than other types of flaps where padded material sits right against your ear. I’ve worn the MOD3, which has identical ear flaps, in a couple of real hoolies, blasted with freezing winds, and my ears have been perfectly comfortable, thank you.
Colours - Lots of variations, both colourful and not. And depending on the combination the black vent-panel on top is either matt or shiny.
Construction - A bit on the fiddly side, in that there are at least 5 different bits of plastic panel making up the exterior surface. The three main panels though, the lower one, running 360 degrees around the botto of the lid, is a creaky fit with the main body of the lid. And the top venting panel is again a creaky fit with that main lid body. When you pick up the MOD3, which has only 2 panels in total that fit tightly together as one, the MOD5 creaks noticeaby. No doubt this doesn’t affect it’s safety performance, but the MOD3 is more satisfying in this regard.
SUMMARY…
A solid choice as a regular riding helmet, for on and off-piste, though it isn’t really touring-oriented. Superbly comfortable, and brilliantly adjustable in almost every way you could want - for head-fit, goggle-fit and for venting - but a bit on the heavier side. For touring, we’d recommend instead Oakley’s lovely, and cheaper, MOD3.