Battle Steel Level IIIA+ Foldable Armor Shield Test & Review

Welcome back everyone. We're at the lovely crack house here to get out of the wind for the initial portion of the video. What we're going over today is this right here. It's a product from Battlesteel. It is a shield and I think it's a pretty smart one. I think it's a niche product that's not going to be for everyone, but I think for the people it's for, it's one of the better options if it performs as advertised, which we will find out here in just a second. But basically it comes like this from the factory. It has a little case as well that it ships in and it is a level three alpha armor. So it should stop any of your pistol rated calibers all the way up to 44 magnum and all the common calibers. We will test that and more here later on in the video. So stay tuned for that. But basically it kind of, if you just look at it and you didn't know what it was, you would think that it was probably a briefcase. You can also add like a strap to it if you want to carry it over your shoulder to make it look sort of like a folded piece of luggage. If you were walking around down the street, I'd be willing to bet that no one's going to give you a second look walking around with this thing. But if you turn it around to this side, what you'll see here is that it does have this handle, which allows for it to instantly deploy. It gives you 36 inches of coverage vertically. And I believe 20, it might be more. Don't quote me on that, but I believe it's 36 inches vertically. And it also gives you the ability that you have here with a shield to flex it towards whatever threat you have. One big advantage of a shield, we've talked about this before, but we also have new people here on the channel, is that you can orient it towards the threat. And as you move through a house or whatever the case might be, it changes. Unlike basically if you have plates, they're kind of fixed in one position versus this, you can orient it towards the threat. And the actual amount of coverage that you get from the armor is dramatically more. So that really is the product built in America, has the Battlesteel logo down here on the bottom, also has the ability to add patches if you guys want to, and has this handle built in. Now, of course, you could, if you want even more control, go through both of them, and that will give you the ability to work the shield very easily. But of course, you come out with a sidearm. And as you guys can see here, if you tuck in well, there's not a whole lot of my body exposed. And being that it is UHW MPE armor, even if I was to take a round right here, should stop it. Now, I don't know that for sure. We're about to find out when we step out there. I do have a dummy setup as well, because one of the frequent questions that I get, which is interesting, like I said, we always get new people here, is with soft armor like this, if you're using it like a shield, would a round, if it were to hit here, would it deflect and like frag into your feet? Now, it shouldn't. I'll just say that. So UHW MPE armor, the way it works is it catches the bullets. Basically, it is a polymer type of material. And as the bullets come in, because of their heat, it melts really quickly and then hardens really quickly, it grabs it. So no fragment should come out. But again, we have a dummy out here today. And we're gonna actually take a look at his feet and stuff like that to see any fragments that come out. I don't think it will. But again, you get new folks and they ask that question a lot. So we're gonna test it today. Let's get out there and start shooting this thing. I was just sitting here doing the editing. It looks like we lost the clip where I'm shooting a Ruger LCP at the shield. So we do have the audio. That's what you're about to see. And that's the impact you're about to see. We'll check it out. We center punched them right here in the armor. And I'm sure you guys can tell they're absolutely no pass through. And we're gonna keep going at 380. 8 it up. Next up some 115 grain ammunition, nine millimeter out of a Glock 34. So it's going to be going pretty fast. It's actually a reasonably difficult thing to stop for armor, but we think it'll be fine. Let's see. Let's check it out. Oh, I think we killed him. If I had to guess, I'd say that's probably not the only time it's going to tip over during this video. Obviously we're a little bit off here and absolutely no penetration on the armor. Despite the wind, we're gonna keep going. Up next, we have some 45 ACP through the HK45. Two more wars, baby. As you guys saw, impact right there on the sewn in box stitching and absolutely nothing came out. I don't know if you guys can see that easiest way, but we are good to go. Let's keep going. Like we said in the beginning of the video, this is rated to stop up to 44 mag and 357 magnum. So all of your popular handgun calibers and under. And we have some 357 mag coming out of a four inch barrel here on my SAR USA revolvers, 125 grain Federal. So it's going to be humming. Four inch barrel, like I said. So let's see. Might be hard to see with the black coloration of the material, but that is where we hit right there. I can actually feel the bullet with my hand. It's still hot. And despite getting shot right in the junk, absolutely no damage at all. No pass through. Let's keep going. At this point in the video, the armor has done its job. It has lived up to its rating. Now we're going to push beyond it because that's kind of what we do here on the channel. So we have my Smith & Wesson MP57, some 40 grain Federal full metal jacket, 5.7 coming out of there. And we'll see if it can stop this. It is not rated for this. This definitely will bust through some armor. So we'll see if it's this armor. Let's check it out. I meant to shoot it about five or six inches away from that 45 round, but I didn't. Basically stacked it right next to it. There's our 5.7, there's our 45. That's poor marksmanship. It is what it is. Get here on the channel. But as you can see, absolutely no pass through at all. Stop the 5.7. Next load up some double op buck high brass 12 gauge coming out of the Mossberg. We'll see how it does. Oh, I don't know if the dummy is going to survive. Seeing the dummy explode was one of those moments where you're kind of like, how did I get here in life? Anyway, we have put it back together through our comprehensive medical training. And there is where that buckshot hit. You can see it was nice and tight. I don't think it wants to live. I think it's dying on me. What you can see there, regardless guys, is there on the back, there was absolutely no pass through. I might have to duct tape this thing or something. We'll see. Once again, this armor has lived up to its claim. We're just abusing it at this point. This time with my eight inch 500 magnum Smith and Wesson revolver, 350 grain pill, and 100% is not rated for this. I think we're going to bust the dummy again. Let's find out. The dummy is not having a good day. Obviously we hit right here as you guys saw in the slow motion. It looks like it might've went through, but guess what? It didn't. Absolutely no pass through. That's just a blunt force injury from that 500 Smith and Wesson magnum. Again, it is not rated for it, but you know what it did? Stopped it. So pretty darn impressive in that regard. Let's keep going. One advantage of any UHWMP armor is its multi-hit capability. So we have my MP5 SD here full of 115 grain minute man munitions, and this one fires in fast semi-auto, we call it on YouTube. And we're going to see if it can soak up 30 rounds of this stuff. If it doesn't fall over, that's probably what's going to happen. Let's find out. As predicted, the dummy was the failure point. That's not really shocking there, but we did get a number of rounds on there to include this one, which actually hit sideways and was still, I think, stopped, which we'll find out here in a second. But if you look on the back side, absolutely no penetration at all. Stopped every single round there. So again, the thing has lived up to everything it's rated for. I'm going to pan the camera down here so you guys can see the feet. There's no spalling at all on the feet. Even with all of these rounds, there's absolutely none. Let me do my camera work. Very high-tech camera work. And you can see, again, no spalling at all. Let's keep going. For the new folks on the channel, we kill all armor here. I'm guessing that's about to happen. We have some 220 grain Remington 300 Blackout Subsonics coming out of my 8-inch barrel Fold AR. And I don't think it's going to live past this. One way to find out. I think the slow-mo gave it away, but we had our impact there. And then if we actually go to the back side, you guys can see that bullet went right on through and then went through the back of it. So for folks who don't know, 300 Blackout Subsonics have about the same energy as that 45, which is stopped just fine. But due to the spitzer shape of the bullet, it went ahead and penetrated right on through and was not stopped at all. But again, we didn't expect that. The armor is absolutely not rated for that. It's also not rated for the 500 Smith & Wesson Magnum, but it stopped it. So we found our failure point and the armor now is officially dead. So we can stop the testing. I think I'm going to stay here to close the video out and have the dummy block some of the wind. But the 300 Blackout round actually went right through the handle there, which is interesting. But like we said, it definitely still could stop almost an infinite amount of rounds. So that is one of the benefits of that UHWMP. Another thing I don't know if we mentioned in the beginning, but it is American made. So I know there's a lot of companies that require that for like security guards, things like that. So if that is something that your company requires, this absolutely will meet that mission set. But again, it's designed primarily to be carried around like this and then used in emergency situations, sort of the gray man, if you will. Full disclosure, Battlesteel did send it out for the testing, but obviously they can't. Have any impact on what happens with the actual testing. So the rounds will go through or they won't go through. That's sort of what is what there is to it. And the last thing we didn't mention is going to be the MSRP on this is $499. So if you look at a lot of the competitive options out there, they are way more than that. And I don't know of any that are using this kind of discrete model. I'm guessing after this video gets out, other companies will copy it because that's kind of how it works. But for a similar size shield, they're all much, much more than that. And I think it's a very usable product. Like I said, it's a niche product, probably for like security type, PSD type guys, low viz. But I mean, in a home defense situation, wouldn't you rather check out your bunk in the night like this? I personally would, as I went through my house, no doubt about it, or like this, or, you know, you can use any other type of weapon that you so choose. But it is a very versatile system. It has applications for everyone, but I don't think everyone's really going to be interested in it per se. But I do think it's a cool product. And I suppose with that, we'll end the video there. If you guys have any questions, you can always post those questions down below in the comment section. Additionally, you can follow me on my social media sites, ask those questions there you guys to see them on your screen. Twitter has been blowing up as of late, which is good. And additionally, if you guys are new here and you like this type of video, definitely hit the subscribe button. If you've done that, you're not seeing two to four videos a week here on the channel. Sign up for my email list at the website here on your screen. I want to do it anyway, simply because you never know when I'll be disappeared like I was in January from this platform. And that way there's a line from me to you and that email goes out once a month. It has all the videos since the previous month's email. So that way, nobody's censoring you for my content, regardless of where I put my videos up. Additionally, if this goes on sale, any of the ammo that we use go on sale, any of the guns, the accessories, the optics, any of that stuff goes on sale. It will go out my daily deals email and you can sign up for that at the website here on your screen. It goes out every day as the name indicates. And if anything is in that email, it's the cheapest on the internet that I know of. So that way it saves you some time because I've already done the booking for you and hopefully saved you some money as well. And with that, we'll close it out. Thanks for watching everybody. It was a good time and I look forward to seeing everybody in the next video.