10,000 Mile Review - Why the Tusk Pilot Panniers are the Best Budget Bags You Can Buy!

I've spent the past 10,000 miles with my set of Tusk Pilot Panniers, and I really think they're a fantastic budget option for bags.
The material and workmanship are high quality, their attachment system is redundant and highly adaptable, and they include 35L drybags as bag liners to keep your gear dry. They're in the goldilocks zone of size, with the ability to swell up to swallow all of your BDR gear on the weekends, or shrink down to hold your toolkit and commuting gear for the ride to work.

They're not perfect, and it takes much longer to install these bags onto a rack than other bags, or bags with a quick-disconnect system might (though Tusk does have separate QD plates to speed the process up). There are so many straps that getting the bag to hang well against the pannier while also holding all of your gear tightly can be a bit of a hassle, and getting into the bags to retrieve contents while it's cinched tightly is difficult. The strap tails also frequently work themselves loose on rough terrain and dangle ghillie-suit style, so you end up having to re-roll the excess sometimes.

If you can live with the downsides and have the patience for a little fiddliness, the bags are an awesome budget option! They're inexpensive without being cheap, and I have no doubt these bags will go another 10,000 miles, if not 50,000.

I am not sponsored by Rocky Mountain ATV or Tusk, I purchased these bags with my own money, and use them on a daily basis.