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NEW PRODUCTS

- Danny Milner, Alice Burwell, Paul Burwell, Mick Kirkman

DAINESE LINEA 01 FULL-FACE HELMET

£219.95

SPECIFICATION Weight: 570g • Sizes: XS-S, M-L, L-XL Contact: windwave.co.uk

After over a decade out of the helmet game, Italian protection legend Dainese is back with the world's lightest ever DH-certified full-face cycling helmet. Called the Linea 01, it targets a new breed of long travel e-biker or trail rider looking for extra coverage, and results from zooming in on every construction detail with its own AGV helmet brand to shave weight, while still attaining the higher protection rating.

Like most lids, the Linea 01's heavily-vented shell uses a polycarbonate outer layer on top of an EPS liner, but inside, a key to the exceptionally low weight (100g or so less than rivals) is an embedded nylon exo-skeleton that bolsters penetration resistance and overall strength.

This webbing also reinforces the chinbar using a lattice structure similar to Dainese's body armour. Small nylon beams (that look like mini scaffolding) inside the helmet are pre-compressed and distorted into something called an 'auxetic' layout. Being auxetic describes a structure with a 'zero Poisson' ratio, which means if the squished shapes are loaded or extended in one direction, they'll subsequently increase in size in all directions, thus hardening the structure. I'm no scientist, but I'm imagining this as some more mechanical version of impact-hardening polymers like D30, also used in body armour.

Dainese also uses different EPS densities in different zones to optimise protection equally all around the skull, thick foam cheek pads to protect against the chinbar getting smashed into your jaw and the latest (thinner) MIPS rotating liner. A flexible (adjustable) visor can also distort in a crash to avoid accelerating forces or extra twisting loads.