WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN LOOKING FOR BALLISTIC PLATES?

The purpose of all this is obviously protection, so one would say "the more protection, the better" right? Well, if that were the case then everyone should be running around in Juggernaut suits. But if there's one thing we all learned from videogames is that such heavy protection comes at the cost of speed which can be a huge disadvantage.

Along with that you can imagine that wearing something so bulky can't be comfortable, especially for long durations. So there's an important tradeoff going on here between protection, comfort and mobility. And these are exactly the factors one need to consider when looking into ballistic protection.

The outcome of whether the full equation (in regards to plates solely) will work out for you depends on a few things. These are the plate's:

NIJ protection level (IIIA, III, IV)
Strength (SA or ICW)
Material (Plastic, ceramic, metal)
Thickness (Ranging from 0.5" to 1.5")
Weight (Ranging from 1,25 to 4,5 kg per plate)
Cut (Full, SAPI, Shooter, Swimmer)
Curvature (Flat, Single-curve, Multi-curve)
Special features (E.g. drop resistance, buoyancy, etc)
Actual measurements (8x10", 10x12", 11x14", etc)

Here we will only focus on the actual measurements alone, since the rest can be quite extensive on its own.

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