The 3810, U210, and 4800 all come to mind as good choices in that range

I figured there might be opinions on such things.

Quality wise they're all the same

Depends on what protection level you’re looking for

Just buy some XSAPI’s faggot

3M, Tencate, Ceredyne, LTC are all hard to buy direct, retailers offer rebrands and etc

ESAPI'ish I think, but I don't have intimate expertise with commercially available armor and modern standards.

Top level protection without being obscenely heavy, SAPI-Medium size.

Esapis are level 4 icw

I'm not trying to build a mil-clone rig or anything, so specific brand gucci is irrelevant

A lot of guys in the US are dropping M2 AP protection in favor of 3+/special threat plates

But there are different opinions

If the weight and price difference increase isn't unreasonable, that seems like the route I'd go.

Buy my xsapis.

$3000

sure, just mail them to my business address in Nevada and I'll send you the bitcoin

I would look at Hesco 3810s with that budget but others here probably have other opinions or more knowledge

Is that even a reasonable budget?

I knew the plates would be expensive, I just don't know how much as a ratio to the cost of literally everything else is right.

Like, I'll spend 1:1 on rifle optics.

How much is your life worth?

It’s enough for pretty high end plates

Depends how I die. These plates will probably never be used.

On the higher end of the commercial spectrum anyway

So that does factor in.

🤔

I mean, ideally nobody will ever be shooting at me. I actually shoot my guns and such.

just look up the brands and see their offerings

??

3M, Tencate, Ceredyne, LTC are all hard to buy direct, retailers offer rebrands and etc

Like suggestions are nice and all but it all comes down to what you're comfortable spending on and we can't tell you that

Right, the usual cycle is I go and look at things, then post "should I buy x?", and everyone shits on it but doesn't provide any useful feedback.

If you're buying plates, you're buying them with the express intent for them to stop a bullet. How well they do that, and how much they impede your range of motion in the process of doing that is up to your wallet.

While F5'ing the worlds slowest thread.

Yeah so you should just look at the specs yourself

Cheapest is obv the bottom and base the differences off that

It's fairly simple: protection level, weight, thickness
Size is irrelevant unless it's some super specific plate that doesn't come in "x" size

Maybe I can rephrase my question. Obviously there's a range of those three factors. One thing many of the people here have in common I'm assuming is that they've bought plates, based on their intended use case. Is there a range that's been settled by now as a reasonable balance point, or no it's just all over the place.

I don't have a strong preference as my use case is entirely hypothetical.

The latter, some people can't afford $400+ plates, some people don't want IV

Are the main arguments for avoiding IV cost, thickness, or weight?