BELL Mag-9 Open Face Motorcycle Helmet

I’ve always liked Bell helmets. My dad manufactured the first Bell Star faceplate molds back in 1966-’67. Even though the company has gone through a couple of corporate changes, Bell helmets are still good. I purchased this Mag-9 because I like the 3/4/Jet helmet design. I haven’t made the jump to the intercom Bluetooth communication systems yet, so can’t comment on that feature of the Mag-9. My head measures 59.5cm (23 1/4-23 1/2″) and is a medium oval shape. As I fell right in between L and XL, I ordered the XL size and it fit perfectly. The cheek pads were a little tight, but Bell has less thick cheek pads in stock, not like Shoei’s cheek pads that are ALWAYS back-ordered, so I figured I’d just order a set of those as the rest of the helmet was fitting just right. Unfortunately, when I opened the box, the peak visor and the sun visor control were sitting loose in the box. They were easily attached as they have plastic bosses molded into them that easily push into mounting points on the helmet. The sun visor control pushes in over its square mounting point. The main clear visor and the drop-down sun visor are optically perfect. On the road, the helmet is noisy, a little noisier than my LS2 3/4 helmet, and way noisier than my Shoei. We are riding motorcycles, though, so . . . The venting is excellent, way better than my LS2 or Shoei helmets. The drop-down sun visor is a bit difficult to engage, but it pops up quickly with a bang and actually works well once you get used to it. The problem I encountered was the peak visor kept popping out, just like it arrived in the box, taking the drop-down visor’s control with it. If this hadn’t happened, I’d have kept this helmet. The Mag-9 is a good design that is just a little bit cheaply built.

As others have stated, the Bell Mag-9 seems to be a little undersized, meaning if you normally wear a medium, order a large as I did. I have several medium helmets from another manufacturer which fit me well and a large size Mag-9 fits me just as well.
Some people have complained about this helmet being loud while riding. Yes, it is louder than a full coverage helmet. It’s loud because it’s an open faced helmet so not much can be done about that.
As far as design issues, the lever to operate the tinted drop down visor is extremely stiff to operate, especially when raising the visor. When it does raise, it does so with a very loud bang. Also, it doesn’t drop down far enough to be fully useful.
Lastly, the so called sun shade on top doesn’t extend far enough forward to do much good. It’s more of a fashion statement than anything else.

Comfortable, fits as it should, nice shield options.

Helmets fits well and looks great! Received on time! Matches bike perfectly!

I bought this through Amazon. There seem to be a lot of riders that like this helmet, and based upon those reviews, I thought I’d try it out. But, to me, this helmet is not good. By way of comparison, I previously used an HJC IS-33. I chose the Bell Mag-9 because I liked the idea of being able to configure the helmet to use without the face shield and the Sena compatibility. I wanted to like this helmet, but there are a few things that make it hard to. The helmet looks great, but compared to the HJC, it is very noisy. Also, the visor fastening/release mechanism is pretty cheaply made; while removing the visor, one of the mounting tabs promptly broke, making it impossible to put the visor back on, but since I don’t ride with it anyway, it’s no big deal for me, but still…I think that it’s just a poor design. The worst thing, however, is that the internal visor will not stay down, not even for a second. The internal visor is one of the reasons I bought this helmet, and it is simply not usable. I contacted Bell about this issue, but they have chosen not to respond. Well I’m stuck with it for now, since I can’t afford to get two new helmets within the same year.

Added Since my original review, I’ve downgraded this from 2 to 1 star because the lever that controls the internal visor has completely broken off!! I’m gentle with these things and don’t muscle them to make them work. It seems just another example of how cheaply this was made. I don’t think I’ll use this helmet anymore; if the components break this easily, I’m not sure it will protect my head. Oh, and Bell did finally respond to one of my emails. According to them, I would have to send them the helmet on my dime for them to EVALUATE the helmet to see if it it would fall under warranty work. Are you kidding me??

We ordered this helmet and it was too small. I thought this is going to be a night mare to return…Wrong. The whole experience was great one, even though it didn’t fit. LOL