Gear Lab #3: A AAA Rating and 48 Sizes — How to Read the Numbers on the Label

Last time I wrote about how a helmet ages after six months of daily use. This time, the opposite end of the process: what to look at before you buy. Lining up the gear news from the first week of August, one thing jumped out — the numbers on the label have moved to the front. Old Soul Moto's armored pants, $249, claim CE Class AAA under EN 17092-2:2020. BMW Motorrad's summer jacket, the Glandon AIR, is €403 and Class AA. Kawasaki's Riding Track Jacket, sold only through Kawasaki Plaza dealers in Japan, is ¥33,000 with CE Level 1 armor at the shoulders and elbows. More numbers is a good thing. Read them wrong, though, and you have bought an expensive mistake.

Start with the class. EN 17092 sorts garments into AAA, AA, A and B based on tests for abrasion, tear and seam strength, with AAA at the top. What matters is that the top of the scale is not automatically the right choice. The Old Soul Moto pants earn AAA from a three-layer build — a cotton and Lycra outer shell, a full DuPont Kevlar mid-layer, a mesh comfort liner — plus CE Level 2 armor at the knees and hips. Tough. But the reviewer notes that the armor is 100% polyurethane with no ventilation holes, and that above roughly 32°C it left heat rashes about 5 by 10cm on both hips. He eventually swapped in vented aftermarket armor. The pants were designed in Waterloo, Ontario. That is where the facts stop. Here is my opinion: a class rating measures the one time you crash. It does not measure the hours you spend riding. Those are two different axes.

The other number is the size chart, and honestly that is what surprised me most. Old Soul Moto lists 48 sizes, from 28×28 to 52×38, with six inseam lengths for every waist. That kind of generosity is rarer than the AAA rating. The Glandon AIR, by contrast, runs men's 46–60 and women's 34–48 — two separate numbering systems. Kawasaki uses five unisex sizes: S, M, L, LL, 3L. Three companies, three completely different philosophies. When the numbering splits by gender, two people with the same chest measurement cannot cross-shop the same rack; the design makes a customer ask a clerk to fetch something from the other section. Gear has no gender. Only fit does. So what I want published is not a gender field, but the actual measurements: shoulder width, sleeve length, chest, inseam.

A third number arrived this week too: weight. Touratech's Aventuro Gravel Carbon uses a shell more than 60% carbon fibre and comes in under 1,500g with visor and peak, certified to both ECE 22.06 and DOT. OGK Kabuto's GEOSYS-R, a limited run arriving in September, has a carbon shell, costs ¥93,500, runs XS to XL and meets Japan's JIS standard. Sena's first adventure smart helmet, the Outlander, is $599 and about 1.7kg in size M. Build the comms in and you add over 200 grams — the trade is right there in the numbers. My yardstick does not change here. On paper 200g is a small difference, but on your neck it pushes in the same direction as the liner sag I wrote about last time. A catalogue weight only means something next to the record of your own body.

And Japanese buyers are already weighing these axes for themselves. In the June 2026 glove sales rankings from the 2Rinkan and Naps chains, MOTORHEAD's Protection Mesh Glove took first at 2Rinkan and the MADMAX GST09 took first at Naps. KOMINE's GK-261 and GK-1853 and Furygan's JET NEON D3O also placed high at both, and mesh types filled the upper ranks at both chains. The products leading with class ratings were not the ones selling. Again, this is my read rather than a fact: that is not people taking safety lightly. It is people picking the highest class they can actually wear through a Japanese June. The rating on gear you leave at home is zero.

So here is the order I would suggest. Measure your waist, inseam, shoulders and chest, and write the numbers down. Then look at the size chart before the class rating, and check whether your measurements are actually inside it — if they are not, drop the garment even at AAA. Third, check whether the armor has ventilation holes and whether it can be swapped for something that does. Finally, wear it around the shop for a full fifteen minutes. What you learn from long wear is never printed on the label. The numbers are not a reason to buy; they are a tool for narrowing the field. Whatever is left standing after all that is your answer.