Adventure Bike Rider Forum

Over the years I've compared hard & soft luggage and even with my old 950SM I preferred the soft variant. A Jofama tail bag.
Even my current 1050 adventure my view hasn't changed, my needs and requirements versus security is all covered.
Lightweight enough even with kit, easily dismountable and used as a holdall when traveling into hotels etc.
And at less than £100 far less costly than any hard pannier alternative.
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Couple of photos of the Kriega OS 32 during the trip. Only 4 days trip and all on road so not a huge test but the ability to take the whole pannier off at night gave me the safety of the metal boxes without the weight. Used the security straps which were easy to put on and off, no real time difference from removing my Touratech panniers. Added some 10 and 5 bags for items I wanted to get at easily. All in all a great setup and transferable to my other bikes. The only issue was that I noticed the platform had bent at the top, only by a few mm but Kriega are looking into it for me. I did not have anything close to the weight they are tested too.

Hard or soft luggage?

Soft, obviously. Alloy would look naff in red

PS: Nice set of 32s

I just rode round europe for just shy of 3 weeks, first time I'd used hard panniers. Never again, I found them a giant pain in the arse even with kit logically split between them based on use. I'm going back to a single, roll top 40L bag.

It depends on weather you intend to go off road. For rough roads here in the east and off road I would say soft is a must. For Europe and thieving western type countries then hard is a better option. I have just returned from Kazakhstan using soft luggage, (kriega overlanders) all my kit is intact and I spent a third of my time off road. Soft gear keeps everything in close on the bike which as lot of advantages, such as balance and filtering through traffic, and of course off road everything is keep tight and secure. It is also better for the ever changing size of your load. I can not praise the Kriega stuff enough it is brilliant. Yes I have used the KTM hard luggage on an earlier 950 and it was shite! Waterproof? No. Crashproof? No. easy to modify? No.
I met some guys in the mountains and one was injured has he had taken a dab going through some tricky stuff and caught his leg on the hard pannier, yet another reason to go soft!!

Soft luggage makes even an Original Africa Twin feel spritely and young again. Using boxes really has a habit of setting in with the old-age-spread

If I ever upgraded my panniers, I would seriously look at these.
http://www.giantloopmoto.com/product/ro ... -panniers/
And as has been mentioned, even if you have large volume soft panniers, they can be adjusted
to suit what your carrying, so it doesn't matter whether you get big panniers.

It seems that soft panniers are the way to go. on trails at least.
Those massive aluminium square edged cases always seemed stupid to me. but I can see their appeal for long distance road adventure.
I liked the narrow plastic ones of times gone by. but I don't see them anymore?

If going offroading I'd recommend one of the giant loop type luggage.
Mine is from 21 brothers and I rate it highly.
4 straps to attach to the bike and never moves even during hard offroading.

Mixture of both works well for me...