In general, when I find myself tempted to complain about a lack of responses, I try to remember that this says more about me than it does about my viewing audience.

I got curious, so I checked the five or six threads which follow this one on my feed. Ignoring multi-page threads (because I want to make it easy on myself), all have about 40 times as many views as responses. In counting, I ignored responses from the originators of each thread.

At the moment this one has 166 views and 4 responses not the OP, one of which doesn't relate at all to the original query. So the response rate has actually gone DOWN since OP's complaint, which perhaps means something about perceptions vs. realities. Interesting? Well, maybe only to me. In any case, this thread is pretty normal, and it has been from the start.

Again in general, I figure that if I post something which doesn't elicit responses it means that either no one but me is interested (often true), or people are interested but don't know the answer. Personally, I fall into the latter category on this topic, so I've been viewing without posting. I'd find a 5 kilo/11 lb maximum very limiting, since I carry far more than that in my hard cases; I can only assume that these stated maximums don't really correspond to the inherent limits of the gear itself. I can't imagine the circumstances under which I'd set off on a long trip with only 10 kilos/22 lbs. in my panniers. Nor can I imagine actually paying the listed prices for most soft panniers in order to carry so little weight.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

Just an update on the issue of weight sustainable in soft panniers on racks attached to bike [ vs soft panniers without racks laid across the seat ]. On another site, one stated he's put up to 45#'s in each and had no problems tar riding/touring for 10's of 1k's of miles. The other said he didn't know how much weight he'd put in his, but it was about 35#'s each side without issues, same, on roads neither rides non graded fire roads/dirt.

I believe 30#'s in each of mine will be plenty, but that's another 16#'s total in the bags over the Varios [ 8#'s to a side ]. My daily load out of tools, extra gear in the panniers is 26#'s. The traveling gear is put aside in one place, and weighs 14#'s. After all that gear is distributed, it will still leave me with 10# more in each bag, so I'll be good with putting clothes and incidentals in the new bags. That saves the second dry bag on top of the seat/rear rack.