Hard tonneau cover or high hardtop? Which is better?

We have already written in detail that a pickup without hardtop or other accessories is a car whose performance is fully exploited – see this post. Coming back to the selection between a hard tonneau cover and a high hardtop, you should bear in mind that everything depends on two aspects, which can be additionally extended with the range of hardtops available in the market:

For some, the most important is the appearance of the vehicle with a hardtop, and for others – the practical usage of the truck bed.  

Visual aspect.

Either you like a higher hardtop, which to some extent changes the pickup into a SUV-like car, or you select a hard tonneau cover because you want to keep the true nature of your pickup. What does the market offer? We have hard tonneau covers made of plastic – most often thermoformed ABS or polyester/glass laminate, painted in a colour. In addition to plastic, hard tonneau covers (also known as flaps) are made of aluminium, usually in the natural colour or painted in black. The covers are lockable and opened by raising the rear part up to approx. 45 degrees. There are also covers that are raised as a whole (both the front and the rear).

The other accessories which keep the original appearance of your pickup are roll covers. They are generally made of aluminium lamellas that in the case of Roll n Lock covers distributed by Road Ranger are covered with black vinyl which, on the one hand improves the appearance of the closed roll cover and on the other hand prevents dirt deposits on or between the cover lamellas which may get into the cover’s case and result in the mechanism jamming in the future.

An important difference between a hard tonneau cover and a roll cover: if you want to carry a load which is higher than the truck bed panels, you can retract the roll cover and just do it. It is different for hard covers – their open position does not provide such an opportunity, but more and more manufacturers apply a solution that enables the cover to be removed in approx. 2 minutes, leaving the entire mounting frame on the vehicle. A disadvantage is that after transporting the higher load to its destination, you have to come back to the place where you have left the removed cover and install it again.

In addition to hard tonneau covers or roll covers, some use soft covers that are sold to measure, but I will not write at length about it.

Practical usage aspect.

It may turn out that the cover will both satisfy you in terms of the appearance of your pickup and be sufficient for your needs of carrying loads. When you use your car for business activities or private purposes, e.g. to carry the whole family with “equipment” and possibly a dog during a family trip, the truck bed with a hard tonneau cover may be insufficient. In this case, the most reasonable will be to select a high hardtop, which is available in multiple versions. You have to match the versions to your expectations. For more information on this subject, see this post. Of course, the hardtop itself is not everything, therefore it is worth familiarising yourself with other accessories that can be used to organise the truck bed and secure the loads carried there.

Exactly as described at the beginning of the text, we will not provide you the precise answer to the question on which solution – high or low hardtop – is better, however we hope that our text will help you make the right decision.