Rudy Project Venger Cross gravel helmet review
Protection for off-tarmac adventures
GBP £140.00 RRP Skip to view deals
Published:
Latest deals
The Rudy Project Venger Cross is a helmet that is aimed at both gravel riders and mountain bikers. That means you get a helmet shape that offers a little more coverage at the rear and sides providing an extra level of safety for technical off-road riding.
The 45mm deep peak is removable, and without it in place the Venger is a good-looking helmet when riding on the road too.
This helmet scores very highly on the comfort front, with the minimal pads and deep channels providing ample cooling airflow.
The quality straps are soft to the touch and simple to adjust and they can be easily removed for cleaning – a real boon if you’ve been riding off road.
A second set of pads is included with an integral bug net. If you’ve ever ridden gravel through clouds of midges then the bug net option is certainly a welcome addition.
The rear cradle offers plenty of vertical adjustment (around 3.5cm) and the micro-adjust dial has a user-friendly soft rubber grip edge that makes it easy to use when wearing gloves.
For a helmet that offers such good coverage, it’s impressively light at just 277.6g for my large size (59cm–63cm).
The fragile EPS foam core is incredibly well protected by a shell that wraps around the underside protecting the foam against accidental damage.
Authors
Warren Rossiter is BikeRadar and Cycling Plus magazine’s senior technical editor for road and gravel. Having been testing bikes for more than 20 years, Warren has an encyclopedic knowledge of road cycling and has been the mastermind behind our Road Bike of the Year test for more than a decade. He’s also a regular presenter on the BikeRadar Podcast and on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel. In his time as a cycling journalist, Warren has written for Mountain Biking UK, What Mountain Bike, Urban Cyclist, Procycling, Cyclingnews, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike and T3. Over the years, Warren has written about thousands of bikes and tested more than 2,500 – from budget road bikes to five-figure superbikes. He has covered all the major innovations in cycling this century, and reported from launches, trade shows and industry events in Europe, Asia, Australia, North American and Africa. While Warren loves fast road bikes and the latest gravel bikes, he also believes electric bikes are the future of transport. You’ll regularly find him commuting on an ebike and he longs for the day when everyone else follows suit. You will find snaps of Warren’s daily rides on the Instagram account of our sister publication, Cycling Plus (@cyclingplus).
