What Is MIPS on a Motorcycle Helmet?

MIPS is a yellow layer you can usually see inside a helmet if you lift the comfort liner, and a logo on the box that adds to the price. It stands for Multi-directional Impact Protection System, it comes from a Swedish company that licenses the technology to helmet makers rather than making helmets itself, and it is one of the most misunderstood things a rider can buy.

The misunderstanding is specific and worth fixing before anything else: MIPS is not a certification. DOT, ECE 22.06 and SNELL M2020 are certifications — a helmet is submitted, tested against a published protocol, and passes or fails. MIPS is a component a manufacturer chooses to install. Those are different categories of claim, and a helmet with MIPS and a helmet with ECE 22.06 are telling you two unrelated things.

The problem MIPS is designed to address

Almost nobody hits the road at a perfect right angle. Real crashes put the head down at an angle and with forward speed, so the impact has two components: a straight-in force that compresses, and a glancing force that makes the head rotate.

Linear compression is the thing helmets have always been good at. A crushable EPS liner absorbs it by deforming, and that is essentially what the classic DOT drop test measures — peak acceleration through a headform dropped onto an anvil.

Rotation is a different injury pathway. The brain sits in fluid inside the skull, and a sudden rotational acceleration causes shearing between brain tissue and the structures around it. The concern in the research community has been that a helmet can perform well on a linear test and do relatively little about the rotational component — which is precisely why ECE 22.06 added oblique-impact testing when it replaced 22.05.

How the MIPS layer works

Physically it is simple. A thin, low-friction layer sits between your head (or the comfort liner) and the EPS impact liner, attached by elastomers that allow a small amount of relative movement. In an angled impact the outer helmet can rotate slightly relative to your head instead of taking your head with it, and MIPS states that this movement of the low-friction layer in certain angled impacts is what reduces rotational energies transferred to the head.

Two qualifications that MIPS itself makes and that we will repeat rather than talk around. First, the effect is described for “certain angled impacts” — not all impacts, and not straight-on ones, where the EPS is doing the work regardless. Second, MIPS states explicitly that no helmet or impact protection system can protect a user from all injuries, and that there are limits to the protective capabilities of all helmets including those with the MIPS system.

We have not tested any of this, we own no lab, and we will not put a percentage on it. What we can do is tell you accurately what the system is designed to do and where it sits relative to the things that are independently measured.

Where MIPS sits against the certifications

Read the last two columns together and the practical hierarchy falls out. A helmet carrying ECE 22.06 has been independently measured on oblique impact, whether or not it contains MIPS. A helmet carrying DOT plus MIPS has been designed to address rotation but has no independent rotational test result attached to it. Both are reasonable purchases. They are not the same claim, and the marketing tends to blur them.

Is MIPS worth paying for?

The honest framing is that it is a tie-break, not a filter. Our order of priorities for choosing a helmet does not change:

1. Fit. A helmet that does not fit cannot hold its liner against your skull, and you will not wear it. See sizing and head shapes.
2. Certification. DOT is the floor; ECE 22.06 or SNELL M2020 mean the helmet passed more, and harder, tests.
3. Weight and noise, which decide whether you enjoy long rides.
4. MIPS and other features, where two helmets are otherwise equivalent.

What we would not do is accept a worse-fitting helmet, or drop from ECE 22.06 to DOT-only, in order to get the MIPS logo. That is trading measured evidence for a design approach.

MIPS is not the only approach

Several makers manage rotational forces with their own systems rather than licensing MIPS — slip layers under other names, multi-density liners, or shell-and-liner geometry designed to shed rotational load. The absence of a MIPS logo does not mean a maker has ignored the problem, and a proprietary system is not automatically inferior. It does mean you have less to compare, because MIPS at least gives you a consistently-named component across brands.

Two MIPS helmets worth knowing

Both of these appear in our rankings for reasons beyond the slip layer, and both are DOT-certified as a baseline.

MIPS on a budget full-face

Bell Qualifier DLX MIPS

DOT FMVSS 218

The value pick that adds MIPS — a low-friction liner designed to reduce rotational forces in an angled impact — to a DOT-certified full-face at a mid price. The most safety tech per dollar in this list.

See the budget helmet ranking

$199.95 · View on Amazon

Price as of September 4, 2026. #ad How we’re funded

MIPS plus ECE 22.06

Bell MX-9 Adventure MIPS

DOT + ECE 22.06

The value benchmark for adventure helmets: DOT and ECE 22.06 certification plus a MIPS rotational-management liner at a mid price. Heavy at roughly 1,696 g, but nothing else certified to 22.06 costs this little.

See the dual-sport ranking

$249.95 · View on Amazon

Price as of September 4, 2026. #ad How we’re funded

The second of those is the interesting one, and it is the shape of what we would look for: a helmet that carries ECE 22.06 and MIPS is not asking you to choose between an independent rotational test and a design feature aimed at the same problem. Where you can have both without giving up fit, take both.

Practical notes

• Washing the liner. The MIPS layer is a moving part. Check the maker’s instructions before pulling the interior out — see how to clean a motorcycle helmet.
• Fit feel. There is an additional layer between your head and the comfort liner. Most riders never notice; a few find the fit marginally different from the same helmet without it.
• Replacement. A MIPS helmet ages and retires like any other helmet — see when to replace a motorcycle helmet. The slip layer is not a reason to keep one longer.