AGV AX-8 DS EVO Helmet

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The AGV AX-8 EVO is the successor to the regular AGV AX-8 DS Helmet, and the DS is the dual sport version of their AVG AX-8 Dirt Helmet.  So, we've seen the AX-8 come out, the well adopted within the dirt world. They took it to the next level with the DS where they added the shield. And what I actually have here, the Silver as well as the White are both going to be regular DS's, and I have them out here. This is actually my helmet out here on the right, to compare to the EVO, which I have in the middle.  You're going to see they're very, very similar.

So, the DS took a face shield and some more on-road, off-road, dual sporting ability, and they've added that to the dirt foundation.  What they're doing with the EVO is they're really, they're really refining some of the nuances.  So, I spent a thousand miles in Italy in my AVG AX-8 DS. I have some signatures on it.  I rode with this guy on the Italian Legendary Tour.  And, if you come in tight, you can see what it looks like without the visor; really, I call it Top Gun Style.  It's really just a gnarly looking helmet, but what you're getting around that $400 mark is a very light weight very high end dual sporting helmet.

Now, moving into the EVO, I'm going to move my two helmets that are regular DS's out of the way here.  Moving into the EVO, the first thing I want to hit on besides the fact that it's a high end, really light weight, really functional dual sport helmet is the nuance's, the improvements over the last model which was the regular DS.  Now, on the EVO, we really have three main improvements.  The first one you can't see, and that's going to be the density of the padding on the inside as you get into some of the higher, the higher size range; so a large, extra-large, 2X in this helmet has a slight different fit pattern.  It's still intermediate oval but it's going to be a more consistent and better fit for you guys with big heads.

The second thing I want to note is when I flip it around to the bottom here, I'm going to pull of the chin spoiler, we've changed the way the front peak comes together.  The first thing we've done is we've gone from hard plastic and now, we've moved to a more rubberized piece here that's going to guard against really trauma to your chest and sternum area if you get in a situation where your head goes down and the helmet's going to come into contact with your chest.  It's not something they saw a lot of, but it's just something that they evolved after this helmet being out for a couple years; and so, you know, we want to make it a bit more protective.

The other thing they've done is they've increased the density and the size of the internal guts here right around where your mouth goes, or where this chin vent would be.  So, where this would come into your face in a crash situation, it's going to be a slightly more forgiving area of padding versus the thinner padding that was in the original DS.  The other notable feature here is we've gone to aluminum bolts here for the peak just for durability's sake.  You know, they were plastic bolts that sheared off on the previous DS and they've gone to aluminum.  It adds a nice style touch but again it's they're a little bit more rugged going forward.

If we come back to the helmet, if this is the first time you're seeing it, really, it's going to have all of the other, the same other properties as the original AGV AX-8 DS Helmet.  So, it's dual sport.  It's built off the dirt chassis of the regular AX-8 Helmet.  It's a very light weight helmet shell.  It's very strong.  So, it's DOT and ECE 22.05 rated.  It's going to be carbon fiber Kevlar and fiberglass so you know you're getting that composite shell that's really nice and light weight, but it's using minimal amount of materials because you're using more technical and more specific materials built to manage the energy in this outer shell.

Removable peak, I showed you what that looked like on mine.  The nice part, my favorite things about the helmet, is I noticed, you know, when I spend a lot of time riding in this helmet, I wear it a lot when I'm riding our 12 GS, or again when I was touring with Dainese [SP] on the Italian Legendary Tour, little distortion in the face shield.  It's going to be a UV resistant face shield.  I didn't spend a lot of time changing face shields you know between a clear and a smoke but it is a screw mechanism.  It's not one of the super-fast change modules but again that, that's, I would consider that one of the drawbacks of the helmet.

Ventilation was fine.  I rode in Italy in this helmet.  It's got nice big channels on the inside.  You're looking at four intake vents from the front so you're going to have two brow vents.  You can see if you come in tight opening and close very easily.  A single chimney here right on the top, and as we move down towards the chin you know where you might just have a grill on your dirt helmet, they've gone with a slider up and down that's going to vent to your face, and again we do have a removable, removable breath guard here as well for the cooler times of the year, and also a removable chin spoiler.

If we start to turn it back, you're going to see that nice big rugged shape to it.  It's going to be that dual sport or off-road shape which has the ridge here that's great for putting your goggle strap across.  You can wear goggles with this guy.  And then, you know, hit a dust storm and flip down the shade shield.  But also, as we look at the back here from a venturi perspective, or from a breathability perspective, you're going to have two venturi vents up top as well as two that are built in along the rim here down at the bottom.  What's that going to do is whenever you have a sphere going through the air at high speed create an area of low pressure by the helmet, it's going to help suck out, passively suck out that more moist air that comes in through the front, pull sweat away, pulls that humidity away from your head, and sucks it out the back keeping you cool.

So, as we move into the guts of this DS EVO, we're going to see its similar materials that we've seen in the DS's and the AX-8's of the past.  It's going to be a wicking material, it's anti-microbial from AGV, and cheek pads are easily removable, solid neck roll creates a decent seal.  Again, I've dual sported in this helmet.  I've also spent over a thousand miles on the road on twisties working hard on the bike and I felt it performed reasonably well for my expectations considering I was riding a myriad of different bikes when I was overseas.  And really, you know, I chose a dual sport helmet that was going to be maybe a little bit of an anomaly compared to all the other sport helmets that everybody I was riding with was wearing themselves.

So, here's your cheek pad.  It does have a decent cut away to install a communicator system, but I found that I actually ended up trimming some of the foam, very easily removable on both sides.  So again, if you're sweating, if it's the summertime, pull over at a gas station, rip these bad boys out rinse them under the water.  In about ten minutes, they'll be dried out if you leave them out in the sunlight, and you'll be good to go, easy way to keep yourself cool in the warmer times of the year.  And, it's going to be four snaps to pull out the entire comfort liner, which we'll see encapsulates the head.

There you go, so we have nice big mesh panels that are going to allow the channels to do their job as air enters the helmet and then, circulates towards the back; and notice they've done an okay job of keeping the stitching away from areas that might create a seam.  I would love to see them move some of the snap tabs a little bit further away from pressure points moving forward, that would be one of my critiques of the helmet liner itself.  And if we look at the inside, you're going to see nice big channels, you know, 10 mm vent holes, both forward and aft where vent would, where the air is going to come in and hit your scalp and allow itself to get sucked through those venturi vents in the back and pull it out of the helmet.

The last thing, I did give it, I'm going to give it good marks from a personal opinion standpoint.  I did, I did mention I've ridden in a lot.  I also want to note that you know while I did trim the cheek pads a bit, I did have a good experience.  Notice I have an SMH-10 from Sena here as my comm system installed on my personal helmet, but I did feel that it was very easy to install the comm, it interfaced well.  You know, sometimes, when you get into the dual sport realm of helmets, it's a bit of a different shaped helmet so you might have different, or varying lengths of booms.  With the Sena, it worked really well.  Three of us used this in Italy.  It was a nice touch, and it actually, you know, you can see where this guy's mounted.  It didn't add a ton of turbulence to the helmet so I was, I was pretty happy with it.  You know I also managed to get Agostini, Lucchinelli, and Simoncelli to sign this guy.