The game has what appears to be three tiers of armor; Light (green), Medium (blue), and Heavy (purple). As far as I can tell, the only differences between the tiers are their stats, with stats increasing with each tier. However, are there any other drawbacks/benefits to using higher tiers? Will heavy armor make you move or react more slowly?
This isn't clearly explained anywhere in game, at least as far as I have discovered.
Best Answer
As mentioned in the comments, Light, Medium, and Heavy don't actually correspond to weight (that would just make too much sense, wouldn't it?). Rather, they describe how good they are at what their specialty is.
That is, Light will give the least amount of boost, Medium will give more, but Heavy will give the most. There are no drawbacks from using Heavy over Light (even for the stealth armor...).
The posts in this thread describes it quite well:
A more detailed guide on what armor ranks/stats mean can be found here if you want additional information.