New Affordable Body Armor Plates Tested: Premier Body Armor FORTIS Line

Hey everybody, it's Magic Prepper. Today we're testing out Premier Body Armor's new Fortis line of affordable body armor options. And what's nice about that is that these are budget-friendly armor plates that still have all of the NIJ ratings that you're looking for when it comes to self-defense. Now we're going to take each plate here that has a different rating, we're going to shoot them with M193, M855, and 308 just to find out if they actually meet the standards that they're set to and whether or not they might exceed them as well so you can make an informed decision when it comes to purchasing body armor. And of course all these armor plates have some things in common like having a seven-year warranty, edge-to-edge protection, a water repellent Cordura cover, and the main difference is that these particular plates are manufactured in Thailand using U.S. made components which is how we're able to get that price point down while still having the high quality you expect from Premier Body Armor. So I do want to mention that MidwayUSA is the biggest supporter of the channel and thanks to them I can get out here and do testing like this and of course they work directly with Premier Body Armor so you can obviously find a lot of those products over at MidwayUSA so big thanks to them. And I also want to mention that part of this new Fortis line is their new Alpha carrier which is very comfortable and also their new ballistic helmet which is affordable compared to all the competition. And at the end of the video I'll tell you about what plates I'm using in my particular plate carrier in order to give you an idea as to what you might be looking for in the sense of threat level rating versus weight and everything else that goes into the specifications. So let's move in to shooting the first plate we have on the list which is going to be the Fortis 3 Plus RF1 single curve plate. Alright quick disclosure Premier Body Armor sent all of the armor plates for testing over to the channel at no cost and of course I'm an affiliate of Premier Body Armor so there is a conflict of interest but everything I'm showing you is exactly as these plates perform so I just wanted to make sure to be transparent about my relationship with Premier Body Armor and the fact that these items were sent over to the channel for free however I'm going to show you the exact results regardless of what happens. Alright so the first plate we're going to test out today is the Fortis 3 Plus RF1 single curve plate. Now just in case you don't know NIJ standards have changed recently and now we have RF1, RF2, and RF3 as opposed to 3, 4, and so on that we had before so be aware of that. But this is a 10 by 12 inch plate that's 1.1 inches thick and it's made of an ultra high molecular weight polyethylene. It weighs 3.4 pounds which is very light and this plate will run you about 250 bucks if you use the links in the description as well as in the pinned comment to get an automatic discount but it can be up to 300 dollars without that so make sure you check that out and this is rated for M193 which is 55 grain 5.56 NATO, M80 which is 147 grain 7.62 by 51 NATO, and 7.62 by 54R. So this plate can do a lot but it's not rated for M855 which is 62 grain 5.56 NATO but we're going to test it out on this plate anyway just to see what happens. So let's strap this thing to a bucket full of sand and start shooting it. Alright so I've got the target set up at 20 yards and we're going to use a 16 inch AR-15 here for this 5.56 test because a 16 inch barrel is going to be the most likely barrel length you'd encounter in the United States but if the armor stops both M193 and M855 projectiles in the process we'll move up to a 20 inch later to see if that makes a difference. So first up we have M193. I'm going to go ahead and load it up and we're going to send around downrange and see how the armor does. Alright sent an M193 downrange let's go check out the plate and see what happens. Alright so that hit the plate right here at the bottom and actually broke the tape so you can see where it impacted so I'm going to go ahead and take this off and check the back for any deformation as well as if there's any penetration or not as long as I can figure out how to use tape. Okay alright so we have quite a bit of back face deformation and I don't know if you can see that but it is very bulbous but there is no exit channel so the bullet itself is actually trapped inside which is what you're expecting and what it's rated to be able to do but with a lot of deformation. So we're going to move on to 308 because this plate is also rated for that and then we'll try out M855 which should penetrate this plate. Okay that M193 did quite a bit of damage but it didn't go through and it wasn't supposed to so now we're going to shoot it with 308 or M80 ball which is 7.62x51 NATO. Now this is only a 13 inch barrel but in all reality it's supposed to stop M80 and M193 is actually much more of a threat of penetrating armor than M80 ball is so we're going to just do it this way anyway because why not and afterward we'll see how much damage the 308 will actually do in comparison to the 556. So let's load it up and see how it goes. Alright let's go check it out. Alright so that 308 impacted pretty close to the M193 around and I was aiming a little bit higher but hey I guess it is what it is. So we're gonna go ahead and take off the plate and see what the back looks like but that is a M80 ball 7.62x51 NATO nasty boy flying right at this plate. And there you have it a ton of back face deformation. I mean this thing is deformed but there is no penetration. Looks like the sticker's even coming off now but there's no hole. The bullet's trapped inside and the plate did exactly what it was advertised to be able to do. So that's pretty impressive. I'm pretty impressed by it. You can see how much damage the bucket took. It's dented in now so what we're going to do is shoot this with M855 which this is not rated for so it should go through but if it doesn't I'll be impressed and so far it's doing exactly what it's advertised to do so I'd say we're good to go but let's try it anyway. Now we're going to try M855 which is green tip of course and this particular plate the Fortis 3 Plus RF1 is not rated for M855 so this should defeat it but we're going to try it out anyway just because I'm curious and the plate did already succeed at stopping the threats that it's rated for. So the plate is a success but I just want to see what this will do. So we're going to load it up and we're going to send one down there and just kind of see what happens. All right I set that 62 grain projectile downrange. Let's see how the plate looks. All right so I sent that M855 right up here around the top of the plate and like I said this plate's not rated for M855 but we're going to check it out just to kind of see what happened. Pull that off. There we go. All right you can see a ton of deformation on the back here but honestly it didn't go through. It captured that steel core or whatever you want to call it projectile right inside the plate. This thing stopped M855. It's not supposed to. It's not rated for it but it actually did. You can see it dented the bucket a little bit up here. I mean that's a lot of deformation. That would not feel good don't get me wrong but it stopped it at 20 yards. That's impressive. So I think we're gonna have to take it up a notch. I wanted to see what the 20 inch barrel will do now because this has already surpassed our expectations. All right the Fortis 3 plus plate already outperformed its specifications but I want to kick it up a notch and just verify that it can handle M193 out of a 20 inch barrel which is what I have right here So let's go ahead and load up M193. That plate's rated to stop it up to 3,250 feet per second which is what a 20 inch barrel generally reaches at muzzle velocity and we'll just see if it can handle it. So we're gonna go ahead and see if it still holds up even after all the abuse it's already taken. Well the bucket reacted. Let's see what the plate looks like. All right so that M193 out of a 20 inch barrel is kind of the gold standard for armor penetration right and it actually impacted right here which is a lot closer to another impact than I wanted. So let's see what happened but if it's going to get through it's probably going to be where another impact already exists. Okay check that out. All right look at that. It actually caught it no problem. M193 out of a 20 inch AR. It's trapped in there. There's no hole. Still a lot of back force deformation so I'm sure you can see but it's it stopped it. So this plate does exactly what it was advertised to do and I'm actually really impressed with it. For three and a half pounds to be able to stop that M193 out of a 20 inch barrel and MA55 which it wasn't even rated for out of a 16 inch barrel this is good. I gotta check this out. Don't get embarrassed but you're on camera. No that's from before. That's it. That's it right there in the tape. Got her in the tape. Not to be confused with the taint. Oh no my sand. Here hold it. Flex seal baby. Oh no. To be fair I think there's a lot of other deformation already there. Yeah there was. That's pretty cool though. I aimed right for that AR. Yeah yeah I was aiming up here when I hit it so but um that's pretty cool though. I mean yeah here let me see the camera. Here you you turn this way. Show me the back of that thing. Okay oh it's already recording still. It must have started recording again. Yeah. All right so we wanted to see what would happen since that plate did so good and Tyler here shot it with an MA55 out of the 20 inch barrel and it hit where there was already a lot of deformation but it did make its way through and I just wanted to share that with everybody because well in all honesty you just need to know so it's not rated for MA55. It stopped it out of a 16 inch barrel at 20 yards just not the 20 inch but also it impacted where there was other deformation already so there's a lot of variables to consider but I thought this was worth sharing as well and now we'll jump over to the 3PLUS GT RF2 plate. All right next up is the Fortis 3PLUS GT RF2 single curve plate. This is also a 10 by 12 inch plate that's 1.1 inches thick and it's made of the UHW MPE as well as SIC which is boron silicon carbide tiles. It weighs four and a half pounds and it runs about $376 and can go up and this plate is actually rated for MA55 so it has one additional benefit over the previous plate and we're going to test it out right now by shooting it. All right that 3PLUS plate was pretty impressive so now we're going to step it up to the 3PLUS GT RF2 plate and the difference between these two plates is that this one is rated to stop M193, M80, and MA55. So let's try it out see how it does and we're going to start with M193 and we'll take it from there and I have a feeling it's going to do well. All right slammed it pretty good let's go check what M193 did to the plate. All right so that M193 hit right here obviously. Now this impact looks a lot crazier than what we saw on the previous plate but this does have the boron silicone tiles throughout the entire front of the strike face so that might be the difference. So let's open it up and see what it did on the back side and see what the difference really is. Okay a little bit of deformation definitely not as bad as what we were seeing in the previous plate and there's no penetration at all. So this caught M193 without issue now let's step it up to M855. M193 wasn't a problem so now we're going to step it up to the M855 which this plate the 3PLUS GT RF2 is actually rated stop. So let's find out if that's accurate and we'll see how it does. I sent that label to high hell. So let's go see what M855 did to the plate and find out if it's actually going to do what it's supposed to do. All right that M855 impact was right here and man on this plate these impacts look way more violent but let's check it out and see what it looks like on the back for deformation or possible penetration. Like I said this plate is specifically rated to stop M855 and it did. There's no penetration at all there's some back face deformation for sure but the bullet's trapped inside so the plate did exactly what it was supposed to do and I think now we're going to shoot it with 308 to see how it does against that because it's also rated to stop that and if it does a good job there maybe we'll throw some M855 or M193 out of a 20 inch at it to see what happens. All right the 3PLUS GT RF2 plate took M855 like a champ so now we're gonna have to throw some M830 hate downrange to see what happens. Honestly I don't have any concerns about it being able to stop this but it's part of the testing and we're here for it so we got to make it happen and of course the 13 inch barrel is probably not the best way to test for this but the gun is way cool so it makes up for it. All right got right in the center away from the previous shot so hopefully we give it the best chance we could let's go see what the plate did. All right that M80 ball definitely made an impact but doesn't look as bad as the other two at least on the surface so let's see how it looks on the back side. Oh man that's a lot of back face deformation that thing is bulbous but there's no penetration at all the 308 is stopped inside just like it was supposed to this is rated to stop 308 and it did a good job of it but the bucket oh the bucket I'm sorry bucket that looks so bad wow so if you're wearing this and got hit by a 308 it wouldn't go inside your body but it would definitely make you feel like something was wrong with your body but it did it it passed it stopped m193 m855 and 308 now so let's go ahead and move over to a 20 inch barrel with m855 since that did penetrate the other plate let's see if this plate that's actually rated to stop m855 will actually stop it. All right since the 3plus gtrf2 plate handled the 308 the m193 and the m855 we're going to try m855 out of a 20 inch barrel now with the kel-tec rdb once again because it went through the previous plate which it was supposed to do in all honesty since that plate wasn't rated for it but this plate is rated to stop m855 we're going to see what happens I'm going to try my best to hit it somewhere that we haven't already hit because I do think that plays a factor but either way the plate's rated for it and we're going to try to do our best to make it prove it so let's see what happens all right hit a little bit low but that's good because it got away from the other impacts let's go see what happened all right I sent that m855 here with the 20 inch barrel impact was down here low on the plate but that's good because it got away from the other impact areas so let's pull it out and see what happened last time that happened I ended up with a kid all right so we have impact area right here lots of back face deformation but no penetration at all in fact the sticker is still intact on this thing which is kind of ridiculous honestly but it's it stopped it m855 out of a 20 inch barrel at 20 yards this plate said no problem at all so yes lots of back face deformation if your body was this barrel you would not be feeling very good but the plate did exactly what it was supposed to do it didn't come out of the bottom or anything like that it's it's in there these plates are doing exactly what they're advertised to be able to do I'm impressed let's move up to level four and see what happens all right lastly we have the fortis level 4 rf3 single curve plate also 10 by 12 inches but this plate is 1.2 inches thick and it has the uhw mpe as well as aluminum oxide tiles and because of that this particular plate has a 0.5 inch strike face inset that protects it from drops so you don't get full edge to edge protection with this plate but it's only a half an inch around that you would have to worry about and then this plate also weighs seven and a half pounds which is pretty heavy compared to the other plates but it has the best armor rating as well and this plate is going to run you around 200 all the way up to 250 this one's rated for everything else that we've already tested as well as armor penetrating 30-06 so this plate should stop just about any threat from a small arm that you would face here in north america but at the cost of weight so let's test it out all right now we've moved on to level 4 armor this is the least expensive plate but it's also the one with the most protection and it does weigh seven and a half pounds but it's rated to stop armor piercing 30-06 which i don't have but what we're going to do is we're just going to start with the 20 inch barrel for 5.56 on this particular plate because it should be able to stop any of the small arms threats that i have access to right now and a 20 inch 5.56 is no joke when it comes to armor penetration and since the other plate was able to stop it this plate shouldn't have any issues either so we're going to start with m193 then we'll move to ma55 we'll shoot it with a 308 but it should stop all these threats easily as long as i don't hit it in the same spot twice so let's get rolling as i get used to loading a bullpup a little bit more often here thanks tyler the best tyler and we'll see what this thing can do i could see the aluminum oxide tiles busting out from way back here let's go see what that m193 did all right so from back there i could see that m193 impact just shattering some of those aluminum carbide or no aluminum oxide tiles and so the last plate actually had boron silicon carbide tiles and you can see the difference but this is what makes this plate capable of stopping armor piercing 30-06 is this composition now let's see the back just to see what deformation there is or if there was any penetration and as you can see there's really not much deformation of course there's a little bit but compared to the other plates it's probably the least that i've seen especially out of a 20 inch barrel for m193 so that's actually really impressive it barely did any damage at all of course it didn't penetrate at all so let's move up to m855 and see if we get similar results all right the level 4 plate stopped m193 as expected we're gonna put m855 into the 20 inch barrel and just see what it can do but i have zero doubt that the plate will stop it as long as i do my part and i don't hit that exact same spot once again so i'm gonna go ahead and get set up and then send one down range wow that was kind of off to the side and that was quite an impact but we'll see what it did all right that was a violent impact that ma55 out of the 20 inch barrel slammed it right here and if you can see inside here it made a really interesting geometric pattern where the projectile impacted you can kind of just see it there i thought it was kind of cool looking now i'm a little bit unsure of what happened here because we had the side of the plate blow out and i don't know if that is from the bullet ripping out the side or if it's because of the deformation that it just ripped open so let's go ahead and take it off the bucket here and take a closer look at it all right so there's really the back face deformation is right here it's very minimal you can't really tell that it's there but you can feel it for sure uh and i'm just not sure if this is where the bullet exited or if like i said the material just ripped out from that aluminum oxide just kind of exploding out the side so i think what we'll do because i already know this will stop 308 right it'll stop 30-06 armor penetrating it'll definitely stop m80 out of a 13 inch barrel let's shoot it again with m855 in the center just to verify that it stops that without issue all right so we're going to do m855 one more time just because i can't verify exactly what happened on the side of the armor plate and i want to just ensure and show you that the plate can stop m855 out of a 20 inch barrel so we'll load the rdb up once again i'm going to try for a more central impact this time and we'll see how it goes all right much better much more centered let's go see what happens all right that impact was way more centered and so i'm a lot more confident that we'll get a more verifiable result here so let me go ahead and open up this armor right here so you can see the back of it there you have it and the crazy part about this level 4 armor is that yes it's heavy and yes it uses the aluminum oxide tiles but you don't get hardly as much back face deformation as the other armor plates and there is like zero right here from that m855 so no penetration at all which makes me believe that this blew out because of the tile expanding more so than the bullet actually leaving the plate this stopped it no problem so now we can hit it with the 308 just to verify and then we'll just talk about final results and i'll give you my opinion on what plates i would suggest just based on performance all right so level 4 plate did what it was supposed to do with 556nado now we're going to hit it with the m80 ball just for good measure i don't think it's going to have an issue with it but we have to at least give it a try because we gave everybody the same medicine today load that up i'm gonna go for the bottom right section so i don't have any overlap i definitely call that bottom right let's go take a look and see what it did all right that was a major impact 308 doesn't play around as you can see it's the biggest hole in the armor plate that we've had so far but i'm confident it stopped it because it's supposed to be able to so let's go ahead pull it off the bucket and see what we can find and there you have it a little bit of back face deformation definitely wouldn't feel good if that happened to you but there is no penetration and there is no bullet hole so level 4 did exactly what it was supposed to be able to i can't test 30-06 ap on it but for the most common things you're going to run into here in the united states it definitely can do that job so let's talk about my suggestions my overall thoughts on everything we saw today and i'll just give you some feedback all right so the test results are in and everything worked as it was supposed to and this armor is pretty impressive considering it's at a budget price point we have the 3 plus rf1 armor which only failed once we threw m855 at it out of a 20 inch barrel and it's not rated for m855 so it still succeeded in meeting all of its expectations then we have the 3 plus gt rf2 armor which stopped all the rounds we threw at it today without issue yes it had back face deformation but no penetration whatsoever and the strike face actually is still relatively intact we also have the level 4 armor which stopped everything as expected since it should be able to stop armor penetrating 30-06 but you do see a lot of deformation here on the strike face from where the aluminum oxide tiles exploded out of the front but the back face barely has any at all so everything worked great now if i'm going to suggest one of these plates to you personally what i'm wearing in my fortis alpha plate carrier right now is the 3 plus gt rf2 plate and it has the best balance of weight versus capability in my opinion it'll stop everything we threw at it today as demonstrated so 20 inch barrel 556 rifles m855 m193 at you it doesn't matter it's going to stop it it's also stopping 308 without issue and it only weighs 4.6 pounds then i would recommend the level 3 plus rf1 plate if you're on a budget and you can't quite afford the gt or the rf2 plate but you still want good protection this did really good especially only weighing three and a half pounds and what's really nice about it is it stopped m855 out of a 16 inch barrel it's not rated to be able to do that but it did and it only failed once that m855 came out of a 20 inch barrel and where it hit already had some deformation so that might have been part of it but either way for the price this is really nice armor especially because it only weighs three and a half pounds those are the two i would recommend and like i said i went with the rf2 or the three plus gt because i wanted to make sure it could stop m855 and it is actually rated to do that and i think that's a common threat we would face here in the united states the level 4 is the cheapest at only around 200 bucks but it also weighs seven and a half pounds it's extremely heavy in comparison and the only thing it does better than the three plus gt rf2 is stop 30.6 armor penetrating ammo and the likelihood of running into that's pretty low but at the same time the weight penalty is actually a real problem this is a lot of additional weight and so if you want to be mobile and you still want to be able to wear your armor without wearing yourself out and then you want to have additional ammo i think the compromise of less weight with only a slight less capability against much rarer threats is worth the trade-off so that was the premier body armor for this line armor testing i think it went really well big thanks to tyler for helping me out with the video because i actually just needed help this was a lot of work and hopefully you learned something if you have any questions about this armor or any of the other types of ammo that we should have tested or something like that that you want to suggest please leave it in the comments below obviously if you like this kind of content hit the subscribe button it helps grow the channel and of course you can go to magicprepper.com if you want to support the channel in any other way like i said i have links in the description as well as in the pinned comment for premier body armor which also go to help support the channel well besides that that's going to be it for magic prepper