Review: Bern Morrison Helmet
Editor’s Note: This review is part of the Mtbr All Mountain Helmet Shootout.
Overview
Bern introduced their new Morrison helmet at the Interbike show this year, and it’s their first full foray into the mountain-bike specific world. Bern is known for their urban, skate and snow helmets, so it’s nice to see them applying their technology to the MTB discipline. The Morrison shares the same shell as their Allston urban helmet, but it has deeper extended coverage in the rear and has a removable visor. It uses a PVC micro-shell aligned with their proprietary Zip Mold liquid injected foam technology, which creates a helmet with a low-profile design and thinner thickness and lower volume, so you don’t have the typical giant bubble up on top of your head.
Fit, Pads and Retention System
Their helmets don’t have a lot of adjustments, so you need to make sure you get a size that more closely fits your head than some of the competition. I ended up getting their large size, and although it fits snugly, I never felt any discomfort or pinch spots, and I liked how it felt like it was an extension of my head. At the back of the helmet is a twist lock system that allows for a bit of adjustment for additional tuning, and it provided just enough tweaking and breathing room for comfort changes, depending on how my head felt at the moment. The helmet is well padded and uses a durable and upscale system, and it absorbs sweat and dissipates it effectively, so I never felt like it was overly damp. I liked the snap-in liner that wraps around the circumstance of the helmet, and it helped keep the padding securely in place, and made it easy to remove it for washing and to swap out the default summer version for an optional warmer winter one. The chin strap was easy to tighten up when doing more technical terrain and for downhilling, and the ear adjusters were simple to alter, and they had a nice clamp to hold everything in place.
Ventilation
The Morrison has 16 holes for ventilation purposes, which helps draw air through the helmet, and it works much better than Bern’s standard skateboard oriented designs. Though it doesn’t have the usual prodigious amount of ventilation holes that most cross-country orientated helmets offer, I found it adequate, and I didn’t feel like my head overheated. The vent pattern made it trickier to attach my GoPro camera strap, but once in position, it worked just fine. I would place it towards the bottom portion of All Mountain helmets for ventilation, but still better much than the Urge Endur-o-Matic.
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