At the start of 2024, Specialized released its fourth-generation Propero helmet. Throughout these four generations, the helmet has gone from being merely inspired by the brand’s racier options to a full-on race-ready option in its own right. When the Propero 4 was unveiled it was tough to see any similarities with its predecessor. Instead of a highly ventilated classical silhouette, the Propero 4 takes its design cues from the brand’s top-tier S-Works Evade.
The Propero 4 comes in roughly a third cheaper than its S-Works sibling, but is the Evade really worth the price difference? After all the brand claims the Propero 4 is 15 seconds faster over 40 km than the S-Works Prevail vented helmet. We wanted to see how the helmet stacked up in the real world.
The Short of It: It’s not perfect, but the Propero is a compelling, affordable alternative to the Evade 3.
Good Stuff: Plenty of colour choices, impressive cooling
Bad stuff: Tri-Fix splitter is difficult to adjust, helmet felt shallower than others
Price: US$200 / €190 / £165 / AU$310
Initial thoughts
Lifting the helmet out of the box the Hyper/Dove Grey colourway immediately impressed; the slight pearlescent finish is something that has to be seen to appreciate fully. If that specific look isn’t to your liking, Specialized offers the Propero 4 in six other colourways, which should be enough choice for anyone.
Beyond the styling, the helmet feels light in your hands for an aero helmet, a category which typically uses more material than conventional vented helmets. The Propero does well to feel light to the touch at 277 grams (weighed); it’s certainly not the lightest helmet you can find (Van Rysel’s FCR comes in at 253 grams for example), but it is competitive at this price point for its aero intentions. Running your hands over the external surface of the helmet, it feels sturdy and well constructed, a welcome and reassuring feeling when handling a new helmet.
The straps are thinner than most at 10 mm, Specialized claims this increases the comfort of the helmet. They are noticeably more flexible and thinner to the eye than those found on other helmets.
How does it feel on my head?
With the helmet on, it does have a slightly larger profile than I had hoped. It certainly isn’t challenging Visma-Lease a Bike’s TT helmets but it is more on the bulbous end of the spectrum than I expected holding it in my hands.
As someone with a small head, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the helmet fitted to my preference, it sat around the midpoint of the helmet’s adjustable 51-56 cm range. As anyone with a small head will know, finding a well-fitting helmet that doesn’t leave you with a massive void towards the rear of the helmet can be a hard ask.
Each helmet in the range has 1 cm of overlap with its neighbouring size, which should make finding the right one for you a straightforward task (provided you don’t have a large head or high-volume hairstyle). The medium covers 55-59 cm heads with the large rounding off the collection with a 58-62 cm range. The helmet has a roundish profile to it that worked well with my head, however might not be the best option for someone with a narrower head shape.
As someone with a slightly pointy head, I tend to prefer the feeling of a deeper helmet. Firstly, coming from a mountain biking background, a deeper helmet always gives a feeling of greater coverage, but it also sits in a nicer position on my brow. The Propero was shallower than other helmets like Bontrager’s Circuit WaveCel or Van Rysel’s FCR (review coming) this did take a little bit of time to get used to.
Due to my head shape, I did also find that the helmet naturally wanted to pitch backwards, leaving me with a larger than I would like gap between my glasses and the helmet. I found that the Propero 4 felt a little shallow on my head. The helmet’s profile noticeably doesn’t extend as far down the forehead as other helmets I have tested recently. Whether this is a good thing is down to the individual however, for me, the helmet felt like it was sitting on top of my head rather than around it.
Initially, when I was assessing the helmet I thought that Specialized had foregone including cradle height adjustment as the internal structure of the helmet looked as though it was fixed in place. Having spent a bit more time with the helmet and carefully inspecting underneath the MIPS liner, the cradle height is adjustable via two independent arms. These are easy enough to adjust but they are not the most obvious straight out of the box. Riders with larger heads may find that the cradle doesn’t fit quite low enough and it would have been nice to see an extra position or two for the cradle to nestle into the small of your skull.
When fitting the helmet, the 10 mm strap width didn’t really cross my mind. This is by no means a bad thing, but I also wasn’t blown away by any tangible differences in comfort compared to wider-strapped helmets. This could in part be due to the stubble that sits between the strap and my skin, but for me, it wasn’t anything to write home about.
The retention system itself was simple and easy to use. At the back, a dial adjuster takes care of proceedings, with a tactile click as it cycles through its motion. I found it was straightforward to use on the fly if I wanted to tweak the fit whilst riding. The dial itself is small and unobtrusive but with the winter gloves I’ve been using more recently, it is a little more fiddly to adjust.
One thing I am very particular about is how the straps fit. This was an area where I felt the Propero was lacking. I found the Tri-Fix splitter that sits underneath your ears to be particularly difficult to adjust; with no ability to alter the height of the splitter, smaller riders will find that it sits very low on the jawline. The advantage that this does have is it delivers a large area around your ear that is free of any straps. The rear strap also attaches to the helmet closer to the rear than on other helmets which helps with the feeling of security and I found this placement to feel comfortable across my head.
My biggest gripe with the adjustability of the Propero 4 was just how inconvenient adjusting the straps was. The Tri-Fix splitter does a fabulous job of keeping your straps in the position you have set them in. A ridge of small plastic teeth grip the material superbly with no walking or creeping to report at all. However, the firm grip does mean that moving the placement of the splitter is a more involved job than I would like it to be. I found in the end that using a pen or something similar was the easiest way to work the material through the splitter to adjust its placement. Luckily this should be a job you only need to do once but once was enough for me.
Comfortable but with room for improvement
Out on the road, the helmet felt comfortable on my head. It was secure without any hotspots or tension points. With the straps correctly adjusted, they sat flat to my face and even on high-speed descents didn’t move around or cause any noticeable wind noise.
There is sufficient padding to make the helmet comfortable for long hours in the saddle without adding too much bulk. A main section that extends around the forehead and up to the top of the head is joined by two separate pads that sit more centrally on top of the head. I found that even on a particularly sweaty ride the helmet did a good job of preventing any dripping onto my glasses, a particular peeve of mine. I did however find that the padding did retain a lot of sweat which on a few occasions, left me with a damp helmet for my next ride which would not be ideal for any aero-inclined commuters.
Something that didn’t particularly bother me but is worth mentioning is that the padding at the front of the Propero 4 did leave indentations on my forehead after an hour’s ride. How much of a consideration this would be is up to you but if you want to look your best at the café it will take a few minutes for the imprint of the pads to dissipate. It must be said that this doesn’t mean anything for comfort; although the pads do leave their mark, when the helmet is on it feels comfortable around the brow.
For a helmet that positions itself at the aero end of the market, I found the Propero to be a really well-ventilated helmet. The front of the Propero has a large U-shaped intake vent in the middle that does a good job of channelling air into the helmet. Inside the helmet, there is a good amount of space between the MIPS liner and the internal channel to allow good airflow across the top of the head.
I found that the Propero’s airflow was comparable to Van Rysel’s FCR aero helmet. However, Specialized has managed to achieve this in a design that uses two fewer vents on the font of the helmet, which likely has a small positive aero advantage over the FCR.
Along with the main central vent, there are two well-sized intakes to the sides that all work together to create a helmet which impressed me with how well it managed to bring air in. I was consciously aware when riding in the Propero that incoming air was replenished before it had the time to get hot. In aero helmets of old, the heat build-up over a ride was unpleasant, to say the least. Although the wind was not rushing through the helmet completely unrestricted it continually flowed through with enough volume to prevent any noticeable heat build-up.
I cannot comment on its performance in extreme heat as it is November and I live in the UK, but on a recent trip to Girona in 23ºC/73°F weather I didn’t find the helmet too hot or restrictive of cooling air. Of course, as the temperature climbs above 25ºC looking to a more vented option is going to provide better cooling which might prevent the Propero from being a year-round helmet choice for some riders.
A win for glasses stowage
Along with the cooling vents, the front of the helmet has two small vents positioned perfectly to accept the stowage of glasses. This is a welcome feature, especially for a rider who takes his glasses off a handful of times each ride. The location of the vents means that the arms of the glasses are guided into the helmet and sit between the MIPS liner and the helmet itself. This makes it very easy and comfortable to place glasses into the helmet without any need to adjust them.
One thing to mention is that I didn’t find the placement of some glasses as secure as in other helmets I have tested. This is partly due to the smooth surfaces that the arms of the glasses rest against inside the helmet. Instead of your hair helping to retain the glasses there is little in the way of friction to hold them. The Scott Torica glasses I tend to ride in have smooth arms with no grippers on them, I found that these were particularly at risk of slipping out of the vents, especially when looking down.
Glasses with rubberised arms, like Oakley’s Jawbreakers, seem to be less prone to this issue but it was still something that I was aware of whenever I looked down. Just how well a helmet retains glasses can be very dependent on both the glasses in question and the size of the helmet. I would always recommend taking your riding glasses with you to try with a helmet before purchasing to ensure your experience aligns with your expectations.
As you would expect from a MIPS Evolve Solution-equipped helmet the Propero 4 was awarded a five-star rating from Virginia Tech’s independent safety testing, with a score of 11.26. This places the Propero in the middle table of five-star rated helmets, ranking 67th out of the 147 five-star rated road helmets that have been tested. As I cannot verify the safety aspects of this helmet in real life, tests like VT’s are the best marker of how the helmet would perform when it is called upon. The MIPS Evolve Solution liner allows for 10-15 mm of motion in the event of an impact. This doesn’t detract from how secure the helmet feels and doesn’t cause any wobbling on rough roads which can afflict some MIPS-equipped helmets.
Read more: New study: pricey, lightweight helmets aren’t always safer
Without access to a wind tunnel, it is impossible to quantify the aero benefit of the helmet. The claim of a four-watt saving over the S-Works Prevail III at 45 km/h is not the comparison to the Evade that we would want from the brand. The Prevail III is the brand’s top-tier ventilated helmet, which is very different in intent from that of the Propero. Based on the Specialized road helmet range we can infer that the Propero 4 is the second-fastest road offering in the line-up.
How does it stack up to the Evade?
Sitting one rung down from the brand’s flagship S-Works Evade 3 aero helmet, the Propero does remarkably well when you put the two helmets toe to toe. Considering that the Evade 3 retails for US$300 / €290 / £275 / AU$425 what you get from the Propero appears to represent a value option that for caters to the needs of most riders.
There are some differences between the two, most notably the shape of the helmet. As covered above, the Propero 4 has a roundish profile to it. In comparison, the Evade 3 is noticeably more oval in shape with a long but narrow profile. When it came to fitting this helmet it didn’t present itself as an issue but it is certainly something to highlight, that these two helmets have opposing profiles.
There is not a great deal that separates the two helmets on the weight front either. In my size small the Evade 3 came in at 258 grams, or 19 grams less than the Propero. Granted this is a weight saving but considering the additional cost this on its own is not reason enough to spend the extra money on the Evade.
When cooling is concerned, I was impressed by the Propero’s ability to draw air into the helmet. It comes as no surprise that the Evade 3 goes a little bit beyond the Propero on this front. Both helmets share a broadly similar vent profile on the front of the helmet. However, the Evade’s central vent is far larger than the U-shaped offering on the Propero. Although I didn’t have any real issues with the cooling performance of the Propero, if you are looking for an aero helmet for use in hot conditions, the Evade may be worth the extra investment.
We hope to be able to provide some aero data on these two helmets in the coming months but based on fit, feel and features alone it is hard to see any benefits that the Evade provides that justifies the significantly higher investment. In this respect, you are getting 95% of the performance of an S-Works level helmet at a far more appealing price. For those with especially narrow heads or looking for the absolute best cooling options in hot climates the Evade might be the perfect choice but for everyone else, the Propero is close enough.
The bottom line
Specialized’s second-tier aero helmet isn’t perfect, a few refinements on the fit and adjustability front would have these corrected. Overall the Propero 4 was a helmet that I was excited to wear and had a feel that went some way to justify the price tag.
For riders who can dial in a fit they are happy with the Propero 4 is a choice that is hard to beat in all but the hottest riding conditions. It is up there with the more expensive helmets in this range but with a premium feel, well-thought-out glasses storage and good ventilation it is hard to look past the Propero 4.
Keep an eye out for more reviews of brand’s second-tier helmet offerings in the coming weeks and months. Let us know in the comments section if there are any helmets you are particularly interested for us to test.
Did we do a good job with this story?