Review: Simpson Journey Bandit Carbon Helmet
Journey Bandit Carbon: An $819 Helmet Sold as ADV Ready That Vibrates Your Brains Out on the Highway
Sold as an on and off road helmet at a premium price, yet the website never warns you it cannot handle highway speeds fully assembled.
I bought the top of the line Journey Bandit Carbon believing I was buying a premium, American made helmet. Simpson is based in New Braunfels, Texas, and while the company does not advertise where its products are actually manufactured, the answer becomes clear once the box arrives: overseas. The helmet was billed as full carbon and approved for road use. At $819.95, my expectations were reasonable, and they were not met.
Here is the context. My ten year old Touratech Aventuro Travel Carbon is perfect. Listeners of the ADV Cannonball Podcast will know that helmet well. It lives in Europe with the GSA now, which is exactly what prompted this new purchase. Even that 100,000 mile relic still does it all flawlessly. That is what I expected from Simpson, because that is precisely how they portray their brand.
01A Visor With No Detent
The first disappointment came during a few short trips around town. Every full face helmet I have owned has a detent that holds the visor open just a crack. This one does not. It is either fully open or fully closed, with nothing in between. A working visor detent is not an unusual ask. It is fundamental.
Worse, once it closes, good luck opening it again. Trying to lift it with one hand while riding is impossible. The entire helmet shifts on your head, so you need two hands to do it.
02No Returns Once You Have Discovered the Flaws
I checked the return policy after the fact, and I was out of luck. No returns once the helmet has been used. I contacted customer service at customerhelp@holley.com, and Kate Villanueva replied:
"We can not accept returns on helmets that have been used..."
You got me there, I guess. Why would I think to check for a feature that has been on every motorcycle and snow machine helmet I have owned over the last forty years? Lesson learned, having never owned a Simpson product before.
It gets worse. Simpson discourages you from making any return at all with the threat of restocking fees and inspection fees. Who charges an inspection fee? There is no satisfaction guarantee anywhere to be found. The message is simple: if you do not like it, tough luck. A company with a policy like that has zero confidence in its own product. Once they have your money, you are not getting it back.
03The Sun Peak That Vibrates Your Brains Out
The real problem showed up when I finally reached the highway. The ADV sun peak began vibrating so violently it was hard to see straight, instant headache. I pulled over as soon as it was safe, and after a careful look, the cause was obvious. It is a design flaw. The sun peak is designed to float freely, with nothing to keep it from vibrating at speed.
I have owned plenty of high end ADV helmets, and none of them showed this little effort in retaining the sun peak firmly while still allowing the visor and chin bar to articulate freely. I genuinely do not know what the engineering team was thinking.
If I had designed this and signed off on mass production, I would be ashamed. I have to assume the designers never tested it in the field or ran any benchmark testing against competitors. How could they have? This is supposed to represent the best of American helmet design, yet it fails at a problem already solved by helmets that cost a fraction of the price. It is disgraceful.
And this vibration is simply dangerous. I am not being pedantic here. The distraction and the effect on your vision is a genuine safety issue, full stop.
When I raised this, Ms. Villanueva responded:
"Customers who use these for daily riding remove the sun peak and add the spacers. We do not recommend using the sun peak for highway speed riding."
Nowhere on the website does it warn that the fully assembled helmet cannot be used at ordinary highway speeds. She added:
"While the Journey Bandit is DOT tested and approved, it is on our adventure line of helmets."
The implication is that an adventure helmet should not be ridden on the highway. Yet nowhere on the website does it say that adventure helmets are for off road use only. It is DOT tested and approved and sold as an on and off road helmet, so a buyer has every reason to expect it to work, fully assembled, on the road.
This is a clever trap. A customer has no way of knowing the sun peak will vibrate at speed without first riding the helmet. But the moment you ride it, you can no longer return it, and you are stuck with a premium priced piece of garbage.
04Internal Sun Shade That Fights Your Face
One more irritant. On my ten year old Touratech modular carbon helmet, you simply reach up, drop the internal sunglasses, and you are set. On the Journey Bandit, they crash into the bridge of your nose. Deploying them takes finesse and adjustment every single time. It is lazy, and it is out of step with every other product in this price range.
!The Bottom Line
Here is what you are actually buying for $819.95: a helmet with no usable visor detent, a visor you cannot open one handed while riding, a sun peak that vibrates badly at highway speed by design, and an internal sun shade that jams into your nose. None of these flaws are disclosed on the website, and none of them are apparent until you ride the helmet.
And that is the whole problem. You cannot discover these atypical design flaws until you use the helmet, and once you use the helmet, you cannot return it. By the time you know what is wrong, you are stuck. Buyer beware.
