Review: Forcite’s MK1S smart helmet stays on your head, not in your face

After years of vaporware concepts and failed startups, a legitimate smart helmet has finally made it to the market. The company (from Australia) is Forcite, and the helmet is the MK1S, which promises to not only handle navigation and media streaming but also bring a little AI to the party, too. I've been living with one for over a month now, and while the experience hasn't been perfect, it's good enough to make me bullish on this technology—and the company.

Let me start by saying I'm a rider who doesn't like distractions. I've reviewed a number of in-helmet communication systems over the years, plus various other motorcycle gadgets, and none have ever made their way into my regular rotation. I'm surrounded by so much tech all the time that, for me, hopping on a motorcycle is an escape.

Given that, I was skeptical that I'd really be enamored of a smart helmet that talks and blinks at me. Color me surprised, then, that I actually enjoyed my time with it.

Unboxing and setup

The MK1S comes in a large, multi-layered box, feeling very much like a premium consumer electronics device—as it should, given its $1,099 MSRP. But before you can use the thing, you have to install the Forcite app, which is available on iOS and Android.

Once installed, the app guides you through pairing your phone to both the helmet and the small wireless thumb controller that mounts on your bike's handlebars. That part was easy enough. You're then prompted to put on the helmet so you can be dazzled with an acoustic fanfare and swelling of lights.

It's an impressive demonstration of what this lid can do. The sound quality is good. However, my sense of marvel was squashed when, moments later, the app got stuck halfway through the tutorial. I killed it and tried again, only to see it hang again in the same place. That left me having to read through the manual, on paper even, a decidedly pedestrian introduction to this flashy gadget.

The SD card slot and USB port.

Credit: Tim Stevens

The manual did teach me some important things, like the locations of the power/pair button, the USB-C port, and the microSD card slot, all of which are tucked up under the chin in a place that you likely won't spot on your own.

Secondly, the four buttons on the wireless controller are not quite intuitive. For example, tap the unlabeled middle button twice to skip the current track and three times to skip back.

The biggest challenge, though, is deciphering the MK1S's light show. The helmet communicates with you via an array of LEDs built into the chin bar, just below the visor. This is a far more subtle solution than the full-on augmented reality display that the Skully AR-1 used, for example, but it also brings more nuance to the experience.

Blinkenlights

A green light sweeping from right to left means to take the next left turn. That's simple, but things get frankly esoteric from there. A flashing yellow light means there's a road hazard ahead, while an inward-sweeping yellow light means traffic. Orange sweeping inward means a road closure, while flashing blue and red means police.

The most straightforward of the 10 colors and patterns (so far) will be easy enough to remember, but I definitely struggled to recall the rest. After a winter away from riding, a refresher course will surely be in order. Thankfully, if you don't mind a disembodied voice talking in your ear, and if you're able to hear it, each prompt comes with a matching vocal cue.

While a more advanced, AR-style display could display more information, I actually appreciate the low-fi LED approach here. It's situated far enough outside of your field of view that it isn't a distraction, yet because of the way it shines up onto the visor, you don't need to look down. It can be a bit hard to see in bright sunlight, but I have to imagine a tinted visor would help there.

Sadly, as I write this, Forcite's $100 smoked visor still isn't available in the US, which makes this a good time to point out that this helmet is incompatible with visors from any other helmet manufacturer. Whether you're a Shoei guy like me or have more of an Arai or AGV head, you'll need a new set of visors.

The triangular thing is the thumb controller.

Credit: Tim Stevens

The fit

I have a size 63 head, and I most commonly ride with an XXL Shoei RF-1200 on the road or an XXL AGV Corsa for track days. The Shoei fits my round (and, yes, large) head perfectly, and I've struggled in the past to find a good fitment from other brands. I was pleasantly surprised to find the XL Forcite MK1S to be a good, snug fit around my head. Lower, around my cheeks and jaw, the MK1S is just a bit on the loose side, but not unsafe.

That said, I do find the MK1S a bit difficult to put on. The microsuede-covered ring around the bottom of the helmet is substantial. I have to pull quite hard to get my noggin through. I found I couldn't wear my larger, custom-molded earplugs because they made that process just a little too painful. Smaller, softer ones are no problem.

That ring serves a good purpose. Despite the pronounced scoops on top details and the silly little wing on the back, the MK1S is a surprisingly quiet helmet. There's little buffeting and no whistling or other annoyances, even when you turn your head away from the direction of travel.

That's good. Less good is that there's not enough in the way of ventilation. I like a lot of airflow in my helmets, and even with every vent open, the MK1S doesn't deliver. I have to wonder whether the helmet's electronics package, clustered in the chin, is a factor. This makes it easy to remove and replace, plus it gives a great vantage point for the integrated camera, but it also limits the opening size there.

On a sunny, warm day, the all-black helmet definitely gets a little toasty. But the raw carbon certainly looks amazing. It also helps keep the helmet's weight in check. The MK1S you see here weighed in at 1,820 g, which is only about 150 g more than my Shoei RF-1200.

The helmet ring made it a bit of effort to put on.

Credit: Tim Stevens

On the road

Other than the heat, the MK1S is quite pleasant to wear on the road. It connects to the controller and phone (a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, in my case) very quickly. Setting up routes in the app is a cinch and, for now, relies on Here Navigation, but I'm told Forcite's developers are working to port it over to Mapbox.

Navigation options are unfortunately limited. You can easily add waypoints, but for a motorcycle-friendly app, it would be nice if it did more to automatically cook up twisty, fun routes. When I spoke with Forcite's CEO and co-founder, Alfred Boyadgis, he promised features like that are coming, but we'll have to see how long it takes for them to get here.

Also coming, I'm told, are improvements to battery life. Just installing the Forcite app caused my phone's battery consumption to spike. I went from regularly having half a charge left at the end of the day to needing to plug in before the evening was through. That was the case even if I hadn't used the helmet that day. Simply having the app running in the background was enough.

Regarding battery life for the helmet, Forcite promises three hours of continuous video recording and eight hours of continuous music streaming and navigation. My testing shows the latter number to be conservative, as I'm seeing well over 12 hours on a charge with intermittent streaming and navigation.

The in-helmet speaker system is good, but I do wish it were a bit louder. On maximum volume, it's just barely enough for me to hear voice navigation prompts at highway speeds with earplugs in. Yes, you can take phone calls on the MK1S, and they're impressively clear in both directions.

Whatever media you play on your phone will play through the helmet, just like any other Bluetooth headset, and while I'm not a music-while-riding kind of guy, this is far preferable to obnoxious on-bike sound systems that force everyone at the intersection to listen to whatever garbage you have queued up.

Finally, there's the 1080p, 60 fps camera system, which has the potential to be great. Right now, though, it's not. You can set the MK1S to start recording automatically when you ride, acting like a two-wheeled dashcam. However, the default setting is to only enable when you press or hold the camera button on the controller.

A screen grab from the headcam.

Credit: Forcite

This could be perfect for capturing one-off incidents, but in my experience, it often took upwards of 10 seconds after pushing the button for the camera to start recording. On a few occasions, it wasn't until minutes later that the camera finally fired. By then, whatever I'd hoped to capture was long gone.

Despite these mostly software-related glitches, after a few weeks of forcing myself to use the MK1S on every ride, whether on my decidedly analog 1965 BMW or an electric Zero Motorcycles DSR/X, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed having it. I don't need navigation for most rides, but for those times I did, it was great to have.

The best part? When I didn't want navigation and didn't want music, the MK1S wasn't dazzling me with data in my face. It just stayed quiet and dark, only flashing into life to warn of impending traffic or the like.

In other words, it was a genuine rider aid, not a rider annoyance.

The cost

Whether that assistance is worth the premium depends on your budget. Again, the Forcite MK1S costs $1,099 in the US. A top-shelf dumb helmet from brands like Shoei or Arai typically costs in the $600 to $800 range, but go with something more advanced, like a Schuberth SP1 Carbon with integrated Bluetooth, and you can spend in excess of $2,000.

If I were in the market right now, I'd be tempted to spend the extra money on the Forcite. It's not that much more than a new helmet plus a dedicated nav and comms system, and if Forcite can deliver on its promised software updates, there's the potential for this thing to become far more. Forcite CEO Boyadgis told me that he wants his company's helmets to evolve into proper smart companions, able to suggest routes, connect with friends, and, in future models, even pair with the bike to pull data from onboard sensors.

Will Forcite's lids get there? Only time will tell, but even if they don't, the MK1S is plenty useful as is. It's already the best choice for a smart helmet on the market—though, to be fair, it doesn't have much competition.