https://www.ebay.com/itm/183020252617

The link above is the specific pair of level III plates I'm interested in. They're cheap and  not too heavy at 5.8 pounds a plate.

Just wondering if it's a safe buy or not.

Thanks.

They're not in the NIJ list and I can almost guarantee if they're not directly Chinese they're made of Chinese componets

They do look like Chinese plates. I like how they say they are NIJ certified, but only their IIIA is.. Email time..

You're almost certainly right that they're Chinese plates.  The helmets on their website are the infamously shoddy, and unmistakable, Chinese Ops-Core knockoffs.  If they sell Chinese helmets, and if their plates look like generic Chinese plates, then it stands to reason that they are...  you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

https://www.skarrarmor.com/kevlar-helmet

Which is not to say that Chinese Level III plates are all bad.  I think the primary flaw of their construction is excessive foam edging, which reduces ceramic area of coverage.  If you can live with that, they're probably quite serviceable.

The excessive foam helps keep the weight down.

Someone should test these. Seems like a game changer if they stand up to what they claim and the testing in their videos.

$135 a plate shipped + under 6lbs... Chinese or not, seems like a good budget plate as opposed to steel.

There's more than one video?  I've just given it a look, and, as far as I can tell, they've got just one video, where they test their ceramic plate against... M193 at 50 yards, and nothing else.  Short of testing against pistol rounds, that's probably the least informative test they could have run.

But there are nevertheless important things we can learn from that video.

First, it looks like their foam edging isn't too excessive.  The plate in the video survived a real edge shot.  So it's not an 8x10" plate masquerading as a 10x12" plate, as so many Chinese-made plates (and some American plates, such as RMA's 1199,) are.

Second, the plate's interior is white-on-white, which means that it's alumina over PE.  The manufacturer's specs claim that the plate is 0.8" thick.  Given that thickness -- 0.8" -- and stated weight -- 5.9 lbs -- the plate's construction likely involves a roughly 6.5mm thick ceramic layer over 11mm++ of Chinese PE.  (It can't be American PE, or the plate would cost far more than $130/unit.)  We can infer from this that the plate may have trouble against tougher steel-core rounds, like the M80A1 and 7.62x39mm API, as the plate's ceramic layer may be too thin to disrupt or fracture their steel penetrators.  Most "API-style" plates utilize thicker ceramic layers over significantly thinner and higher-quality PE layers -- but the math doesn't work out that way for this plate.  Of course, the manufacturer doesn't claim that this plate will stop those rounds... and I'm actually quite sure that it'll have little trouble with the M855A1, in any case.

All in all, it seems like a really decent armor plate, especially when its cost is taken into consideration.  If Skarr gets this thing certified and can keep pricing low, armor OEMs like Tencate and Hesco are going to lose some sleep over it.