Sena’s Spider X Slim splits its battery to slim down helmet bulk
If you’ve ever looked at a helmet-mounted intercom and thought it looks like someone bolted a house brick to the side of your lid, Sena’s heard you. Their new Spider X Slim tackles the bulk problem at the source, by taking the battery out of the main unit entirely.
The battery now lives separately, mountable either inside or outside the helmet depending on how you want to run it. The result is a smaller primary module that sits closer to the shell and doesn’t stick out half as far. You still get a claimed 11 hours of talk time, so you’re not trading runtime for the tidier look.
Under the skin it’s still full Mesh. The Spider X Slim supports both Mesh 3.0 and Mesh 2.0 protocols and covers rider-to-rider comms up to 1.6km. When that’s not enough range, long group rides, touring across counties, Sena’s Wave Intercom function cuts in, using your mobile data connection to keep everyone in the conversation wherever there’s a signal.
Music streaming, GPS prompts, phone calls, group ride chatter, it handles the lot. Audio is handled through Sena’s partnership with Bose, branded here as “Sound by Bose”, with a dedicated digital processor and custom tuning aimed at keeping things clear across music, navigation, calls and rider comms. Whether that makes a meaningful difference over previous units is something you’d want to test in anger, but the hardware backing is there.
The rest of the spec sheet is solid: AI noise reduction on the microphone, voice commands, FM radio, over-the-air updates, and an IPX7 waterproof rating, so a British summer won’t trouble it. Sena has also added interchangeable outer covers in black, chrome, silver and white, which is a small thing but a useful one if you’re precious about your lid’s look.
It comes with Sena’s limited lifetime warranty. A single unit starts at £239, with the dual-rider pack priced at £459. Full details are on the Sena website.
