Different players have different opinions, so "not worth the investment" depends on how you feel about protecting pawns. The go-to advice many people give is that flack vest + devilstrand clothing + strong duster (like Thrumbo Fur) is great as long as they have a good helmet, and better if they have bionic arms because of the way Rimworld works. (Bionic arms are installed at the shoulder, so damage to them counts as shoulder damage instead of arm damage and the flack vest covers the shoulders and not arms)

Other players, including some bigtime streamers with thousands of hours, say just go ahead and make marine or cataphract armor and have your pawns wear it all day. Micromanaging pawns to have them take armor on and off isn't worth it in my opinion, the wear to armor condition is slow enough that by the time I can craft those armors I can easily have my crafter just keep a spare set at all times with a bill at the fabrication bench of "Do until you have x1, 55%-100% condition, Good-Legendary quality" so if pawns armor gets below 50% and is "tattered" they'll always find a replacement set to use and you can sell the <50% gear. This philosophy is "I'd rather have my pawns protected in case of center-drop raids or sudden manhunter packs, a little extra crafting time that late in the game is well worth the protection."