Hello travellers, my 2 cents "updated" :

I've made 40 000 km during the last 5 months, from France to Kazakhstan then Morocco, with Touratech Zega Pro 2 panniers. Mainly road, from excellent to awful, and I've just made 170km of tough offroad in Morocco.

Here are the main points I will remember about the soft vs hard luggage debate :
- It's better to travel (reasonnably) light. And hard luggage add 'dead weight' even empty.
- If you intend to drive mainly on correct roads, no problem with hard luggage. They are even a plus because they are quicker to pack, and you can let the bike without surveillance without having to worry too much (but most of the time in addition of panniers you have also a soft rackpack above them....). Anyways, during my trip I've never been stolen anything on the bike (of course I avoid letting my stuff packed on it overnight or in wrong places, and when needed I secured the rackpack with a steel mesh PacSafe).
- If you intend to drive on damaged roads, or offroad, go for soft luggage. I haven't tried them (except the rackpack), but I've travelled with another rider equipped with soft luggage, properly packed and strapped to the bike, it was clearly an advantage offroad. You can feel that both the bike and the luggage suffer less. And less wide too, which is important in traffic.
- If you go for hard panniers, my experience with Touratech Zega is good, except concerning the system Pro2, which has failed on one of my panniers (overloaded). I would go for the classic Zega Pro system, more robust. Choose the narrowest panniers (31 liters). And follow the manufacturer's recommandations for max load.

In conclusion, the next time, I will travel lighter, and with high-quality soft luggage (and perhaps a small and solid topcase loaded with light stuff, in order to have a lockable place on the bike).

The advantages / disadvantages of using a rack for holding luggages has been discussed before. But after offroading a lot in Africa, there is one advantage that I have not seen mentioned: using a luggage rack with a metal loop that goes behind the rear tire is really great for deep sand riding.

When you get stuck in the sand, you just need to go behind the bike, grab that metal loop, lift the rear end of the bike to remove the rear wheel from the sand hole. You are good to go in no time. It is so much faster than digging with your hands under the bike. Of course, this works better if you ride a 650cc or less bike and your are in ok shape. The legs are doing the work.

there is better method out there simply lay down bike on one side, that will cause rear wheel to go up and hole in sand will bury itself. Stand up the bike back and you're good to go.

damn, my givi trekkers are heavy to carry even when empty but it's the best choice when I travel 2-up which also implicates good roads most off the time.

When riding solo and bad roads or off-road dominate soft luggage only, no really other alternative here. Who wants break your bike subframe or destroy your pannier in the middle of nowhere?

BTW, soft luggage is also waterproof theses days.

Or ... have that heavy hard bag trap your leg and break it. Many documented cases of this over last 10 years following ADV Travelers.

Some will defend and say how the hard bag protected their leg, and kept the bike OFF the leg. So that can happen also ... if you're lucky!

Yes, this can work .... or not. If your racks are really heavy duty, then should be OK. But some are not. A friends KLR got stuck in Mud. 3 of us tried to get it out, so we took hard bags OFF the bike, grabbed the rear cross bar ... and it broke! We got the bike out and used bailing wire to temp hold the rack.

It was dicey as with overloaded hard bag mounted back onto rack ... we were worried Jerry Rigged rack fix would not hold for long. It did. KLR guy got it welded the next day. All good. So, use caution when lifting bike. Mud is very tough as your slipping and falling on your ass every time you try to move.
Man, I hate mud.

yeah, same debate goes with boxer engine whether it protects your legs or actually can cause injury. Some report on the net about busted knee by that sticking out cylinder heads. I rather leaning towards the latter, the less hard parts during the crash the better

You have a good point Mollydog. I was using the Happy trail rack on the DR650. I really liked that rack. It was very solid. But I cannot say the same about the bottle holder from the same company. I broke them riding corrogations.

Tremens, I'll try that next time and see how I like it.

I got a set of Kappa K33Ns with bike-specific racks for about 230 euros... but that was a very friendly dealer with a lot of overstock.

I'd agree that at least on asphalt, hardbags can act as crash protection. I scuffed mine up almost immediately, but they saved my paintjob in the process, if not my legs... low-speed hard-surface stuff though.

I would not necessarily agree that hardbags promote overpacking. My first few trips, I had softbags - first just a pair of soft panniers slung over the pillion with a rucksack strapped on top, then a full Motodetail set with a big rollbag for the pillion. Learning not to overpack was a function of experience for me. Granted I've not gone RTW, but I did go on a month-long trip around Europe packing everything into the panniers, with small electronics (phone, camera, powerbank, GoPro) in a quick-remove tankbag. Top box stayed empty for locking my helmet and tankbag at stops. Camping stuff was in a separate rollbag on the pillion - never ended up needing it, stayed in hotels/hostels. So basically all my clothes, laptop, souvenirs, spares, etc. fit into the two 33L panniers. They're not flat boxes and don't promote strapping more stuff to the top of them, which was a matter of discipline on its own!

In terms of security... beyond the de-facto ease of breaking into the panniers, there are two other factors to consider. One is your own mental well-being. Your panniers are probably not going to contain anything massively expensive or irreplaceable anyway. The financial loss from getting a few jeans, shirts and cooking utensils stolen is probably not catastrophic. But with soft luggage, you will spend your time away from the bike worrying about it. Hardbags save your nerve cells moreso than your possessions.

The other factor is the same as the "invisibility cloak" of a bike cover. Everyone Knows(tm) that hardbags are super hard to break into! So nobody will even try. Softbags attract idle hands and cheeky looks, hardbags don't. In my experience.

I would allways go for hard panniers as they protekt your legs and the bike when the bike is falling and they protect your expensive stuff from rain and burglers.
Hary panniers can easily build by your selfe: Build your own panniers made easy

I think the 200 quid luggage was from before this thread was old enough to vote, get married, join the army, buy a round....

Times have changed.

My current set up is all soft except this



Andy

I've been riding for tens of thousands of miles with Ortlieb QRLs and have been very happy with them. That said, the mounting bar should be made of something other than plastic, however, although it slightly bends under load, it has yet to fail and that even included a down in the middle of a creek AND my new laptop inside was still dry once I drug myself out from under the bike and got it unloaded. The mounting system is easy to detach, so theft at least at night is not a problem as you can just snatch them right off your bike and bring them inside or stick them in your tent. And while on the bike, unless you know how to take them off it is not that easy for a casual bystander to take them off.

With all that said, however, I am stoked to see what Lone Rider is coming up with. Ought to see their new soft panniers by early 2018. Super cool system with watertight bags and a system of attaching stuff to the outside (kind of a molle wrapped around the watertight inner bags). I've been chatting back and forth with Fred since they started planning these and I think it will be a superior product once done.

no, they do not protect your legs nor valuables - try crash at some speed and you'll see. Hard panniers will be torn off the bike mounts and all things inside thrown around. The rider can be smashed or squeezed with sharp edges of panniers. You were thinking about just tip over weren't you? LOL

I think you both are RIGHT! I've seen it go both ways. One time the riders legs end up protected by hard bags because rider kept feet on pegs and sort of "rode out" the fall. In this case the Alu box took the HIT, then held the bike UP off the riders leg.

I've also seen the opposite ... where riders leg somehow got UNDER the bag.
Not good.

Also, personally witnessed a minor broken leg at walking speed off road: Deep sand, rider started to go down, tried to jump clear of bike ... but his leg got trapped under Hard box. Not good!

NOTE: this is very similar to how Ted Simon broke his leg in Africa. Took him a long long time to recover.

Our guy was able to still ride the bike. Only a minor Tibia crack, not a real break. We followed him to hospital. (2.5 hours away) A week later, back home, his Surgeon put in a couple pins, all OK in 6 months. He was lucky, but it can be much worse with bad luck.

I know when I had hard boxes on my BMW I constantly smashed the backs of my legs while trying to paddle through sand or dirt in slow riding. Hated that.
Never fell off that R100RS so don't know about trapped legs or ... protection.

Like I say, can go either way! Do you feel lucky!