LS2 FF901 Advant X Ultra Grey Purple – Flip-Up Touring Helmet ECE 22.06 P/J

The Ultra pattern again, this time in a dusty mauve that shifts towards rose-grey in daylight, with magenta accent bands and white hairlines cutting across it. It is the only helmet in the range that uses a warm colour as its main field, and it is a long way from the usual motorcycle palette.

Four stars from SHARP — and this is the helmet they tested

Four stars from SHARP, and unlike most helmets carrying that claim, it belongs to this exact model. The UK Department for Transport tested an LS2 Advant X in July 2024 under ECE 22.06 and recorded the helmet as composite fibre at 1.6 kg — which is the HPFC shell and the 1600 g weight you are reading about here.

What four stars means in practice: SHARP drops the helmet onto flat and kerb-shaped anvils at three speeds and measures the acceleration reaching a headform at five zones. Straight fives at 6.0 and 7.5 m/s across all five zones. At the hardest 8.5 m/s impact, five at the crown, front and rear, three at the sides. Separately, the flip-front test: the chin bar remained fully locked through 63 % of impacts. No manufacturer paid for that test and no manufacturer can influence it.

About the Ultra Grey Purple finish

The main panel is not really purple and not really grey — it is a muted mauve with enough warmth to read as a colour and enough grey to stay wearable, and it changes noticeably between overcast and direct light. Against it, two saturated magenta bands run back along the flank and up over the crown, separated by fine white pinstripes that stop the two tones bleeding into one another. Matt is essential to the effect: under gloss, mauve tends towards metallic lilac and the whole thing would look like a different, cheaper idea. What makes this finish work on a motorcycle rather than only on a shelf is the black. Everything below the pivot line and behind the rear exhaust stays flat black, so the colour is confined to the upper half of the shell where it is seen and does not swamp the helmet. It pairs unexpectedly well with plain black, white and silver machines, where it is the only colour in the picture.

A chin bar that folds out of the airstream

The chin bar does not stop on top of your head. It carries on through a full 180 degrees until it lies flat against the back of the shell, below ear level. That single difference is what separates a flip-up you open at the pumps from one you can ride open for an hour: a bar parked on the crown stands in undisturbed air and behaves like the flat plate it is, lifting and drumming from about 80 km/h upwards.

Stowed at the rear it sits inside the shell's own turbulent wake, where there is very little left to disturb. The release is a single control with a firm detent — deliberate enough that a glove brushing past will not open it, light enough to work one-handed at a junction. Closing it is the same movement in reverse, and the bar does not slam.

P and J: two homologations on one label

P/J is what turns a folding chin bar into a second helmet rather than a party trick. Under ECE 22.06 a modular helmet can be homologated as protective ("P"), as a jet helmet ("J"), or as both. This one carries both approvals, which is why riding it with the chin bar stowed is within the certification across the EU rather than a grey area you hope nobody asks about.

There is an engineering reading of the same fact. To earn the P, the chin bar had to survive the standard's impact and locking tests — so the mechanism holding it shut is a certified structure rather than a convenience catch. SHARP measured the same thing independently and found it fully locked in 63 % of impacts.

HPFC — what the shell is actually made of

The shell is a fibre composite that LS2 designates HPFC. It is worth knowing where that sits: above the thermoplastics on the cheaper LS2 helmets, below the carbon on the Advant X Carbon, and the same class of material LS2 uses for its composite full-face touring models.

On a modular helmet the shell does more work than on a full-face. It carries the pivot the chin bar rotates on, the housing for the drop-down sun visor and the latch that has to hold the bar shut under impact — three deliberate interruptions in a structure whose job is to be uninterrupted. Composite construction is how those regions get reinforced without adding thickness everywhere else.

What the ECE 22.06 plaque actually means

ECE 22.06 is not a relabelled 22.05. The old standard hit five marked points on the shell and recorded straight-line deceleration. The current one hits up to eighteen, at multiple speeds, and adds an oblique impact against a slanted, sandpaper-faced anvil — a test designed to measure rotation rather than compression.

Rotation is the injury mechanism European regulation ignored for decades: a glancing blow that twists the head does more damage to the brain than the same energy delivered straight on. 22.06 puts a hard ceiling on it. The visor and any fitted accessory go through the process too, which is why a drop-down sun visor cannot simply be added after approval.

The tabs a paramedic looks for

A modular helmet has a joint where a full-face has none, and ECE 22.06 tests that joint: the chin bar must stay locked when the helmet is struck. SHARP measured the same property independently and recorded it fully locked through 63 % of impacts — a number you can weigh, rather than a reassurance you have to take on trust.

Beyond the joint, the specification is multi-density EPS with moulded-in ventilation channels, a reinforced chin strap, a micrometric buckle with a metal ratchet, and an emergency release on the cheek pads that lets a paramedic take the helmet off without rotating your neck.

Three screens, one shell

Three screens come with this helmet. A clear outer visor is fitted: scratch-resistant hardcoat, UV-stable, wide aperture, quick-release so it changes without tools. A second outer visor, already tinted, is in the box — the part most manufacturers sell separately for around fifty euros. And behind the outer screen sits a drop-down sun visor on a slider, which LS2 calls the Twin Visor System.

A Pinlock® 120 MaxVision™ XLT insert is supplied as well. Each part of that name means something: 120 is Pinlock's highest optical class, MaxVision is the wide cut that reaches the edges of the aperture instead of leaving a frame in your vision, and XLT is the size made for this visor. On a flip-up ridden through winter, an anti-fog insert is not an accessory.

In at two ends, out at the back

Chin intake, crown intake, rear exhaust, breath deflector. What separates this from a token system is the polystyrene: the channels are moulded into the EPS rather than relying on the gap between liner and shell, so incoming air is guided over the head instead of dispersing. Without the rear outlet none of it would move — an intake with no exhaust is just a hole.

Realistic expectations are worth setting. No modular helmet ventilates like a vented sports full-face, because the pivot, latch and sun-visor housing occupy volume that would otherwise be duct. What this system does well is the touring case: steady airflow at road speed, a visor that stays clear in the cold, and the option of simply rotating the chin bar away in summer traffic.

Fit, and the honest word on two shells

Two shells, seven sizes, split at XL. Compared with the three shells on the FF808, FF817 and FF820 that is coarser, and the effect lands on the small sizes — an XS carries the same shell as an L with extra polystyrene making up the difference.

It is a trade every modular helmet makes, because the chin-bar pivot, the locking mechanism and the sun-visor housing are moulded into the shell itself. What you get in exchange here is a composite shell with an independent four-star rating rather than a third tool. Riders in the middle of the range will not notice; riders at the very bottom should try one on.

The liner, and one claim we are not making

Everything that touches your head is removable and washable. Behind the fabric is laser-cut foam, which matters more than it sounds: a laser can vary the cut depth continuously, so a cheek pad can be shaped rather than simply stamped out — firm at the jaw line to stop the helmet moving, relieved where a cheekbone or a pair of spectacle arms would otherwise be pressed.

Note what LS2 does not claim here. The X-Static silver antibacterial fabric appears in the specification for the Advant X Carbon; for this composite version LS2 lists the liner as removable, washable, breathable and hypoallergenic, with no antibacterial finish. We are not going to add a claim the manufacturer has not made. Wash it every few weeks and the practical difference is small.

Before you buy an intercom

Before you order a communicator, read this. The Advant X takes its intercom by adhesive mount only — there is no clamp slot between the shell and the cheek pad for a bracket to slide into. LS2 states it explicitly, and it is better known before the parcel arrives than after.

What the helmet does provide is proper preparation: shaped speaker pockets in the EPS so the drivers sit flush rather than pressing on your ears, and a routing channel for the loom. Installation is straightforward, it is simply permanent. Dry-fit the unit against the helmet on your head first to check the button reaches your thumb, degrease the shell with isopropyl alcohol, bond it and leave it overnight.

On noise

Nobody publishes a decibel figure for this helmet and we are not going to invent one. What can be said is where the noise comes from: turbulence at the base of the shell, air entering under the chin bar, and open vents. A chin curtain is fitted as standard, and it is the single most effective piece of quiet in the box — provided it stays in the helmet after you clean it. The 180-degree chin bar helps here: a modular bar parked on the crown sits in clean air and drums, while one lying flat behind the head does not.

The rest is not the helmet's doing. A tall screen that pushes dirty air straight at your head will make any lid loud, and a naked bike at 130 km/h will beat the best-sealed helmet on the market. Earplugs remain the cheapest upgrade in motorcycling.

1600 grams on a flip-up

At 1600 g (±50) this is a mid-weight helmet in absolute terms and a competitive one for what it is. The honest comparison is with other P/J modulars carrying an internal sun visor: they cluster around 1650 to 1800 grams, because a mechanism that has to rotate, lock and pass an impact test does not come free.

Wind load compounds it at motorway speed, which is where the 180-degree chin bar earns some of the weight back — a bar stowed behind the head is not being pushed the way a bar standing on the crown is. Over a long day the difference is felt as fatigue you do not have, which is difficult to demonstrate in a shop and obvious at the end of a ride.

Carbon or composite? A straight answer

Two Advant X models sit side by side in this shop and they are not the same helmet under the paint. This is the composite: HPFC shell, 1600 g, from 399 €. The carbon is carbon 6K in both shell and chin bar, 1550 g, from 469 €, and carries an X-Static silver antibacterial liner this one does not.

The decisive difference is not weight, it is evidence. SHARP tested a composite-fibre Advant X at 1.6 kg — this helmet — and gave it four stars out of five. That result belongs to this shell and we do not transfer it to the carbon. Anyone advertising the carbon Advant X with four SHARP stars attached has not checked which helmet was on the rig.

Where it sits in our LS2 range

Two flip-ups and three full-face models frame this helmet in our LS2 line-up. Read the table for what the folding chin bar costs against a comparable composite full-face, and what the carbon Advant X costs above it.

When something wears out

A helmet is not a sealed unit and the parts that wear are not the shell. Interiors compress, visors scratch, vent covers snap off in a car park. We stock the Advant X liner in every size, cheek pads, six replacement visors from clear through to iridium gold, the tinted sun visor and its mechanism, plus complete replacement chin bars in every colourway, chin, top and rear vents in matching finishes, ratchet plates, pins and the chin curtain.

That matters for how long the helmet lasts you. A liner that has taken a summer of sweat is the usual reason a helmet that once fitted starts to move on your head — and replacing it costs a fraction of replacing the helmet. The full parts list is in the FF901 Advant X Kit.

In the box

• LS2 FF901 Advant X helmet — Ultra Grey Purple
• Carrying backpack
• Tinted visor
• Pinlock® 120 MaxVision™ XLT anti-fog insert (DKS433)
• Reflective stickers

Specification

• Model — LS2 FF901 Advant X
• Part number — 569012465
• Colour — Ultra Grey Purple — Ultra graphic, matt mauve and magenta on black
• Homologation — ECE 22.06, dual P/J (protective and jet)
• Safety rating — SHARP 4 of 5 stars (tested July 2024, ECE 22.06)
• Helmet type — Flip-up / modular, chin bar rotating 180° to the rear
• Shell — HPFC fibre composite, two shell sizes (XS–L / XL–3XL)
• Weight — 1600 g (±50 g)
• Sizes — XS to 3XL (seven sizes)
• Anti-fog — Pinlock® 120 MaxVision™ XLT (DKS433) supplied
• Visor — Twin Visor System, scratch-resistant, UV-stable, quick-release; tinted second visor supplied
• Sun visor — integrated, tinted, drop-down
• Impact liner — multi-density EPS with moulded ventilation channels
• Retention — micrometric metal buckle, reinforced chin strap, emergency release system
• Ventilation — chin intake, top intake, rear exhaust port, breath deflector
• Liner — laser-cut foam, hypoallergenic, breathable, removable and washable (no antibacterial treatment specified)
• Intercom — prepared for the LS2 intercom — adhesive mount only, no clamp slot