Gear Lab #5: 297 Grams You Can Lose by Swapping Pads — What's Inside the Jacket You Already Own

Last time I wrote about the running costs an airbag vest's price tag never mentions — the numbers that start after you buy. This time I want to back up one step and talk about what is inside the jacket you already own. KLIM has released a new armor system called Rogue: fifteen types covering knee, elbow, shoulder, hip, back and chest. Level 1 is 7.5mm thick, Level 2 and Level 2 EXP are 11mm. But what caught my eye was not the thickness — it was the weight. As a jacket-and-pant set, KLIM says Rogue saves 133 grams at Level 1, 297 grams at Level 2 and 243 grams at EXP. Breathability, depending on which pad you look at, improves by 175% to 725%. Motorcycle.com's write-up adds that the Level 2 limb pads are now as thin as the previous generation's Level 1 armor. In other words, there was nearly 300 grams of slack still sitting in our old pads, even while holding the same Level 2 rating. Standard Rogue comes fitted in KLIM's new and redesigned 2026 outerwear, and has been available on its own since this spring.

So let's go over how to read those ratings. Under EN 1621-1, Level 1 means the force reaching your body averages below 35 kN with no single strike above 50 kN. Level 2 means an average below 20 kN and no single strike above 30 kN. The smaller the number, the less force gets through. But the thing I keep harping on is the condition the test was run in. CE testing has four conditions: ambient, wet, cold and hot. By KLIM's own description, ambient is 23°C at 50% humidity for 48 hours or more, wet is 72 hours in water above 70°C, cold is -10°C for 24 hours, and hot is 40°C for 24 hours before the pad gets struck. Only two of those are required, and the maker says Rogue passes all four. A pad that stiffens on a winter morning, a pad that goes too soft in a midsummer traffic jam — cold and hot aren't catalog decoration, they're the conditions you actually ride in.

What I'd measure before buying is the pocket. KLIM says the EXP pads cover an average of 44% more area than standard CE-size pads. They're also asymmetric: right knee and left knee, right shoulder and left shoulder each get their own shape. Elbow for elbow, hip for hip, each mold laid out around where the bone actually sits. I'm behind that thinking. Human knees don't crash symmetrically, so putting two identical pads in a pair of trousers is arguably the stranger choice. More coverage is good, but more coverage also means a higher chance the pad won't sit in your jacket's pocket. The compatibility fine print says as much. Standard Rogue drops into more than 30 previous-generation KLIM garments, while EXP Level 2 is limited to the Badlands Pro and Badlands Pro A3 family. If you're planning to transplant pads into another brand's jacket, measure the pocket's height and width with a tape before you buy. And where a pad lands changes with the body. A chest with curves, a wide set of shoulders, more depth around the middle — in the same size M, the point where the elbow pad sits on the olecranon shifts by a couple of centimeters. Gear has no gender. Only whether it fits.

Here's my conclusion. Before you build a budget for an airbag, pull every pad out of the jacket you own and lay them on a desk. Does the face say Level 1, Level 2, or nothing at all because it's just foam? Measure the thickness, weigh them, put them back, then raise your arms. Get into a riding crouch. If the elbow pad slides down, that's a problem that comes before any rating. A jacket I wore for years turned out to have a back pad with no rating stamped on it anywhere. When I bought it, I wasn't looking that closely either. Swapping armor is the cheapest way I know to move your protection up a step without replacing the whole outfit. But changing pads does not change the shell fabric. Surviving the slide is the fabric's job and absorbing the hit is the pad's job, so keep those two separate in your head. Rogue has been shipping since this spring, and other brands will follow. The day a price tag lists how many millimeters the pad is and how many of the four conditions it passed — that's a day I'd be happy to see.