Schuberth C5 ANC helmet review

In recent years there's been a lot of talk about noise cancelling in motorcycle helmets. And it seems like something that we should all want to take advantage of, but noise cancelling in a motorcycle helmet is not like the noise cancelling you get in a set of Bose headphones.

Frankly, we think a lot of people are going to be quite disappointed by the difference noise cancelling in a motorcycle helmet makes. The difference it makes is not nothing; but then again it's not huge. And what always needs to be borne in mind is that noise cancelling will make nowhere near the difference that a set of even the very cheapest earplugs will make.

And so we counsel a degree of caution. Which is why we are going to adopt a very different approach to other sellers.

Initially, certainly for the first few months until its capabilities and limitations are better understood, we are not going to make the C5 ANC available online. You can read all about it on the website, but you won't be able to buy one.

You can buy the helmet in the shop, but only after you have taken one for a test ride; and to that end we have a full set of ANC helmets for people to take out.

Yes, we're trying to manage expectations here, but more importantly we don't want anyone throwing pretty much a grand at a helmet only then to discover, after they've bought it, that it doesn't do what they thought it would.

The problem is that, wherever you buy an ANC helmet, if you ride in it and ultimately find its performance disappointing, you won't be able to take it back. And it would be the same here at Motolegends.

If an ANC helmet develops a fault, we'll have it repaired or replaced, as is your legal right, but we won't take a helmet back merely because it's not as quiet as somebody hoped it was going to be!

Our thinking is that a 15-20 minute ride out from the shop should give you an understanding as to what the ANC helmet does, and what its capabilities are. If when you get back from your ride you like what you've experienced, then buy one; and if you do then the good news is that we are pretty much the only retailer in the UK to hold all the liners to customise the C5 ANC's fit.

But if you come back from your ride less impressed than you hoped you would be, then walk away. Don't buy the helmet. Invest in some earplugs, perhaps; or buy a Jag.

Listen, this way of going about launching the ANC helmet is going to lose us a lot of sales. We know that. People from all over the country, and indeed from all over the world, buy from our website. But for the first few months, and until such time as word has got around about how these helmets perform, we prefer the idea of making sure people go into this with their eyes open. Their ears too, I suppose!

Anyway, first let's tell you a bit about the helmet.

What the Schuberth C5 ANC is

The ANC version of the C5 is largely the same as the standard C5.

It has larger recesses for the much more powerful speakers, which are 53 mm rather than the standard 40 mm ones. (We'll come back to this because the speakers are quite special).

For some reason that nobody has been able to explain to us, the drop-down sun visor is deeper on the ANC helmet.

In terms of custom fitting, the ANC helmet will take all the various crown pads that fit into the existing C5; but the ANC helmets won't take the C5's various cheekpads. And that's a potential problem because thicker cheekpads can quite significantly reduce the noise level in a helmet.

Now we're told that the cheekpads will be coming through, but knowing how fast Schuberth works that doesn't necessarily mean in the foreseeable future!

Initially, the helmet will only be available in three colours: matt black, white and Concrete Grey.

The helmet comes in the same six sizes as the standard C5.

Normally we would leave talking prices until the end, but we'll be going over the test ride arrangements in the last section, so let's get the prices out of the way.

The standard C5 is £560 in black and in white. It is £590 in Concrete Grey.

The ANC version is £640; so it costs between £50 and £80 more than the regular C5.

The standard Cardo Edge integrated comms. for the C5 costs £292 if you buy it with the helmet. The ANC Cardo Edge comms. that also does the noise cancelling costs £417 if you buy it with the helmet. That is to say that the ANC comms. is £125 more expensive than the regular one.

So you will pay between £175 and about £200 more to get an ANC C5 with comms. over a standard C5 with comms..

Now we are not suggesting that's nothing, but a major benefit of the ANC helmet is its huge and much better quality 53 mm speakers. And that's worth something. A standard upgrade from Cardo's 40mm speakers to JBL's 45mm speakers would cost you £90, but even those are not as powerful as the immense 53mm ones in the ANC helmet.

And so we tend to the view that on any kind of 'pari-pasu' comparison you are probably only paying somewhere around £100 extra for the ANC helmet; and so if you do end up being disappointed by the noise cancelling facility you are, in truth, not necessarily a grand out of pocket, but rather just a tenth of that when compared to a standard C5 with comms..

Now even if you are disappointed by the effectiveness of the noise cancelling, even the harshest critic would have to accept that it does do something. And if you've only paid £100 for that extra little something, however marginal, then the ANC starts to look like pretty good value!

Plus, of course, the ANC has those amazing speakers meaning you get a much more immersive experience when you listen to music. You also get greater volume and clarity when talking to other riders.

Noise cancelling in helmets

Schuberth is not the first player to release a noise-cancelling helmet. Both Sena and Cardo got their helmets out there before Schuberth.

But there is a body of opinion that would suggest that most people would feel more confident riding in a helmet that is produced by a company that makes helmets for a living, rather than in one made by a company whose primary skill set is electronics.

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can get a branded helmet made for them these days. But when you buy a helmet made by a helmet manufacturer you buy into their years of experience, their established quality-control processes, their understanding as to what makes a helmet safe to ride in, what makes a helmet easy to live with and so on.

And that's particularly relevant here because Schuberth has always been known for producing quiet helmets; and if you are buying a helmet because you want to escape the noise, then a Schuberth has surely got to be a better starting point than a Cardo or a Sena helmet?

The science behind noise-cancelling technology is, on one level, pretty straightforward. In essence, in the case of a helmet, the internal speakers will generate anti-noise; basically sound waves of a frequency that matches the particular frequency that you want to 'cancel'.

Now that's easily achieved in an office environment or when you're sat in a plane; but it's a much more challenging proposition when you're on the bike barrelling down the motorway at 75 mph.

The noise that is generated at such a speed, especially on an unfaired motorcycle, is huge such that if you don't wear earplugs you will be doing harm to your ears. You need mighty powerful speakers to counter the amount of noise that batters a motorcyclist's ears, and frankly the kind of speakers that you can fit into a helmet will never be up to the job. The best you can hope for is to reduce the noise level a little.

In this instance, working with Cardo, Schuberth has targeted noise in the mid range of 100 Hz to 1000 Hz. This is the range where wind noise is likely to be most prevalent. And it in this range that Schuberth reckons the greatest gains are to be had.

Schuberth claims that their new helmet can deliver reductions of up to 10 dB in this spectrum. And whilst that doesn’t sound like a big number, in reality it is pretty impressive.

Now decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale; and what this means is that an increase of just 3 dB equates to a near doubling in sound intensity. Now we have read one review by a social media influencer where the writer suggested that a 3 dB increase equated to a doubling of the sound level. That's just wrong. Sound intensity is not the same as the perceived level of sound. In fact, a change of 3 dB is barely perceptible to the human ear.

Now a reduction of 10 dB, which is what Schuberth claims the C5 ANC can deliver, equates to a times ten reduction in acoustic power or intensity. In general terms, this means that the noise will be perceived by the human ear as half as loud.

What the noise cancelling software in the Schuberth helmet does not set out to cancel to the same degree are the higher frequency sounds in the 1000 Hz to 6000 Hz frequency range. And it is here that you’d expect to find car horns, emergency sirens, screeching tyres and the like. Sounds that you still want to be able to hear.

Now all of this is good stuff, and it sounds encouraging, but we have been doing this long enough to know that simply regurgitating what the manufacturers tell us will not wash with motorcyclists. Everybody experiences things like noise differently. What we are also aware of is that we all have different expectations; indeed sometimes wildly different ones.

Which is why we really don’t think you should take anybody’s word for it. Not Schuberth’s, not a retailer’s, and certainly not the word of a sponsored, subscriber-hungry social media influencer who has been given a free helmet. Nor, by the same token, should you take our word for it.

As I've said, we will all perceive any noise reduction differently. In the case of the ANC it will be affected by the shape of your head, how well the helmet fits you, what bike you ride, how tall you are, how tall the screen is and, frankly, how deaf you are already!

Our view is that before you invest you should take one of these helmets out for a test ride. That’s the only way.

A number of our technical and shop people have already ridden in the new helmet, and unsurprisingly they all have slightly different views. Joe, our PFS guy, was impressed. Graham, our designer, thought it didn't make much of a difference, although he does ride an offensively noisy bike. Rob, the shop manager, has also tested one. He found it very quiet, although he thinks that all his helmets are quiet. We figure he's just quite deaf, which would certainly explain a lot of things!

I took one out for a couple of hours, and what I found interesting was that when you turn the noise cancelling off as you are riding down the road, the difference it makes is quite marked. It was impressive that a couple of speakers in a helmet could have elicited such a change.

But here’s the thing. Turn the ANC on, and you can’t escape the fact that riding a bike at speed is still a helluva noisy affair.

The problem with the term 'noise cancelling' is that it implies that such technology can cut all the noise out, but patently it cannot. Yes, noise cancelling will for most people make the ride quieter. But it still won't quell the barrage of sound as well as a set of earplugs will. Some people will be delighted with the difference that the noise cancelling technology on the ANC delivers; as ever others will feel that it adds little.

Of course, you can buy an ANC helmet off the shelf from another retailer, and take pot luck, but if it doesn’t work for you you could well come to the view that you have wasted your money.

Or you could come and see us, in order to try before you buy, with the added bonus that if you like it, you just happen to be in probably the only shop in the country that can fit it properly.

How the test rides are going to work

We are not going to do appointments. Just turn up when it suits.

If we're busy in the shop, tell the person who comes to the door that you're here for an ANC test ride, and it may be that we can sneak you in the back door, so to speak.

If the size you want is out on test there may be a little wait, but we will be asking people not to be out for more than 20 minutes or so, so your wait should be a short one.

We may well ask to take a picture of your licence if we don't recognise you, but that's all we'll need.

We'll give you a run through, and show you how to make the noise cancelling work. We'll also show you how to turn it on and off as you're riding along. And then we'll send you on your way. If, when you get back, you decide it's not for you, that's fine by us. Indeed we'll be delighted that we’ve helped you avoid making an expensive mistake. If you like what you hear, or rather don't hear, we can progress to a fitting.

All the helmets, by the way, are here and in the shop, all charged up and ready to go.

For more information and to view online, click Schuberth C5 ANC helmet.