At nigh-on £200 the Trek Blaze WaveCel helmet is on the expensive side of open face lids but it is fully featured.
- Brand: Trek
- Product: Blaze WaveCel helmet
- Price: £199.99
- From:Trek Bikes
- Tested by: Aran for 2 months
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Pros
- Fully featured modern MTB helmet
- Does its two different guises very well
- Decently airy
Cons
- Expensive
- Not a fan of this colourway, sorry
- Thankfully there’s a cool/boring Black option
Our rating
This Trek Blaze helmet doesn’t go down the Mips route, instead it uses WaveCel: a clear plastic mesh inside the helmet. Aside from its alien appearance WaveCel serves similarly to a crumple zone in a car. It’s designed to compress and deform in a crash to reduce rotational impacts and distribute stress over a wider area.
For nigh-on £200, this helmet is on the expensive side of open face lids, but it is a fully featured helmet with an impressive number of features and attention to detail. The Blaze features some extended ‘ear muff’-style side-pieces. These are quickly removable allowing for a nice and easy switch from a full-on enduro lid to a less aggro pedaling friendly helmet.
The helmet is fastened with a Fidlock chin clip, and tightened with a BOA dial-in fit system. A personal favourite feature of mine is the Blendr magnetic mount system – which provides a break-away mount for GoPro et al – which I have made good use of this season. With most cycling organisations’ rules mandating break-away mounts at a lot of enduro races now, integrating a breakaway into a helmet is just good sense and is something I’d like to see more of.
For added longevity the peak is also magnetically attached so will ping off in a small crash rather than snap. This peak is three-position adjustable, with the highest allowing a pair of goggles to fit underneath. The peak locks in securely, with no play or rattle even after a few knocks.
On the topic of eyewear, the peak also features two subtle loops for the arms of your sunglasses. I found these to be a little too widely spaced which at times can feel a bit awkward when trying to thread specs into the peak. That said, once stowed these eyewear loops are really secure and haven’t let my specs fall out, or even move.
With the ‘ear muffs’ side-pieces on, the helmet is comfortable; nicely cradling and making for a reassuring, closed-in feel. Without the side-pieces, I did notice the Blaze is relatively shallow, but I think this makes for a definite double-job convertible helmet (enduro and XC, or maybe even cold weather and warm weather?)
On the whole the helmet is impressively lightweight and comfortable. Initially I was worried about the breathability given how much more closed off the WaveCel system (compared to Mips). However, the design of this mesh nicely funnels air onto the head allowing for decent cooling. You can sometimes even hear the wind whistling through this mesh. It’s not a constant whistling as that would really get on your nerves but a sort of gentle reminder every now and then.
Overall
The Trek Blaze WaveCel is expensive (at full RRP at least). For all this money though you do get an impressively well-designed helmet. It is comfortable, lightweight, protective and feels generally very solid. Nothing feels fragile. Definitely worthy of consideration. It’s also available in other colours than this ‘Gravel/Dark Aquatic’ design (Bronze Age/Black or Black are the other options).
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Are enduro riders more likely to land on their ears when they crash?
Last time I had head to ground interface wearing an open face, resulting in a broken jaw, my Fox Dropframe would ‘possibly’ have prevented it – my head hit by my ear and my jaw snapped sideways breaking on the opposite side to the impact
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I’ve never felt I’d want to take the earpieces off the Dropframe in the way you’d take a chin bar off a convertible full face. I’m a bit puzzled by this helmet TBF. The Dropframe looks better too imo