tychay

Technically Bongrager/Trek never said MIPS is inferior, they said Wavecell is much better than standard EPS, You can infer it is better than MIPS also. This is probably because MIPS is used in Bontrager helmets, so directly attacking them undercuts it. Personally this statement is not a good look for MIPS. First they may have started out as scientists, but they have a market position to protect—MIPS is trademarked, but protecting against rotational or shear forces is not. It is obvious they have a huge economic incentive to hide behind the power of that yellow logo to add $20 MSRP to a helmet. Not admitting to that under the guise of “science” puts them no better then Trek. Second, the main criticism of MIPS is that there is no way to prove reducing such forces reduces concussions in real life. MIPS using that exact same attack line against a competing product is rich. Finally, why pick this company/tech to attack? This is not the first sort of variant to attempt to improve on MIPS with a gel approach. I own a Kali Interceptor whose LDL liooks like it operates similar to WaveCell. My guess is Trek, being so large with a lot of distribution and marketing clout represents no new threat to the MIPS tech, but is a serious threat to MIPS *marketing and branding*. The other vendors with competing tech (like Kali) do not license MIPS and charge significantly less for their tech (I believe Kali is introducing a new helmet with LDLlike performance for $60 MSRP) which makes it an ???? to ????, but it lacks a ???? to ???? comparison. My Giro Synthe MIPS is sold side by side with the Synthe telling me I paid exactly $x more for a piece of plastic and some yellow breakaways. Here Trek is selling regular EPS helmets, the same helmets with MIPS for $x more and a helmet with “WaveCell” but without MIPS in their top end price range. they are telling through price and marketing that they have tech that does what MIPS does, only better, and that must be attacked, science be damned. The only thing I have to say this in MIPS defense is that the real innovator here in the last 30 years is the idea of designing helmets to reduce rotational/shear forces instead of rigid impact, and that was innovated not by Bontrager, but by the team behind MIPS. I’d be pretty butthurt by that. But you either take the high ground and stay above it, or you don’t and roll around with the pigs, Gut instinct: 20k tests and whatever, I fail to see how a bunch of people with a deep understanding of materials and a large marketing and research budget can’t improve on a plastic done and some breakaway tabs. MIPS probably should have taken their licensing $ and introduced MIPS2 while lowering the fees on MIPS or turned MIPS into a certification/rating, instead of letting encourage their licensees to look for ways to get around their intersources fees, You know, when Apple introduced the LaserWriter, they paid $1k per machine to Adobe for Postscript. You don’t see anyone paying a penny for PDF. At some point you got to pivot your monopoly into a lasting advantage, looks like that timer has started in earnest. I’ve still got a lot of mileage left in my Kali LDL and Giro MIPS to be bothered to throw around some benjamins when I have yet to crash in either (let alone crash twice in the Kali), but my girlfriend needs a new helmet, and I’m going to have her try on a WaveCell first.