Shelling out for hard-shell armor almost always buys more protection than memory foam or other soft armor.

• fact
  The goal of any body armor is to block force and then absorb it, so many of the best systems use a hard shell backed by force-absorbing padding.
• fiction
  The goal of any body armor is to block force and then absorb it, so many of the best systems use a hard shell backed by force-absorbing padding.