There are great-but-expensive armour carrying vest options, and there are bad-but-cheap options, which frankly you should only consider if you are a private individual who, for whatever reason, needs to wear armour *right now*. At the end of the day your choice of plates and/or soft fillers is more important than the nylon shell if you are choosing products with your own money (vs mandatory issued equipment). That said, the carrier certainly will matter to at least some extent when time comes to wear it.
In the smart man’s middle ground there lies various choices which I would say are excellent for a very large portion of people. While rarely mentioned, the Raine Tactical RTG PC is definitely a strong contender in that arena.
There is very stiff competition bracketing the $300 price point. If you want actual mil-spec materials built in to a modern, full PALS carrier that’s made by free people in the West, that’s pretty much the price you should expect to pay for gear made within the last year.
For me some of the top competitors are variants of the Velocity APC/SCARAB, the Crye JPC 2.0/SPC and the RTG PC. All made in the US from top quality materials and with significant feature sets for duty type usage, in particular being able to accept standard front placards. There are dozens of features you could compare between them and indeed many other good options not mentioned, but without writing 10000 words on the topic there’s no way I can really dive in to that sufficiently. Bearing in mind the RTG and SPC are sold as just plate bag sets, so your price and features vary significantly depending on your cummerbund choice.
Some key differences include the fact the SPC is a very modern design and you’ll get a structural cummerbund for less than the RTG, but the RTG entirely encapsulates the armour and is fully setup for Tubes on both the cummerbund and shoulders, not to mention other QR hardware options. A lot of the Vel Sys options use legacy 1″ webbing for PALS whereas the RTG is all laser cut laminate, but the VS rigs can often be had for a bit less money.
As always, look at what you need to carry, buy cordura accordingly.
Plate bag set with the basic Tubes cummerbund. If you only intend to carry a light load on your sides then this cummerbund is just fine, but it shouldn’t be heavily loaded, is not structural and has no armour carriage capability.
With the 1.5″ metal loops on the shoulder attachment points, Tubes can very easily be attached at either shoulder (or both) if so desired. I usually recommend adding one to your non-shooting side.
The admin pocket on the chest is a nice addition for some small and thin items and there is a pretty good assortment of cable management slots and attachment points for PTTs up here.
Unfortunately I’m just a nerd who usually uses fake plates and I only have 1 set of real SAPI sized plate to test, so I can’t comment on a wide range of armour fitment inside the RTG. It does seem to be designed more as a specific plate carrier for standalones than having any intention of fitting soft armour panels though.
Cummerbund attachment is velcro only, but a swiss-cheese adapter for bungee cord is available if you really have to have a certain type of cummerbund that only uses the cord lacing method.
In future it would maybe be interesting to see UCAS zips added for back panels, but equally the reality is that a lot of people really don’t need back panels on their PC so getting the price a bit lower also makes sense as an option on the market. Laser cut PALS offers more than enough modularity for 95% or more of users.
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