The Best Suitcases for Checking

The Baseline Medium’s exterior is wrapped in 1,680-denier ballistic nylon, which is durable and puncture resistant. But what’s more impressive is what’s underneath the nylon. The Baseline’s frame is the strongest we’ve seen among any of the soft-sided luggage we tested. This bag can take considerable pressure from any angle. As with our top checked luggage pick, the Travelpro, the Baseline Medium has two external pockets: a small one for tickets and passports and a larger one for small items or light outerwear.

Luggage

We chose five luggage tags that will help you identify your belongings in a sea of similar suitcases.

The Best Toiletry Bags

After stuffing, shaking, and dunking 23 toiletry bags, we chose five that can serve as your bathroom-in-a-bag in a variety of travel scenarios.

The Best Carry-On Travel Backpacks

After traveling with 22 backpacks, we’d choose to carry the Cotopaxi Allpa 35L or the Peak Design Travel Backpack 45L —but we offer other great options as well.

Apple AirTags Are the Best Luggage Trackers

Worried about luggage going missing during holiday travel? How Apple’s AirTag and Android’s Tile Mate can help you keep tabs on it—even when the airline can’t.

The Best Suitcases for Checking

After researching 26 models, we found that Travelpro’s Platinum Elite 25-Inch Expandable Spinner Suiter is the best suitcase for most travelers who check bags.

The Best Carry-On Luggage

We’ve tested 47 bags over nine years, and we are convinced that the 21-inch Travelpro Platinum Elite is the best carry-on suitcase for most travelers.

The Best Packing Cubes

After researching and traveling with packing cubes for more than five years, the Eagle Creek Pack-It Reveal Cube Set is what we keep in our luggage.

The Best Duffle Bags

After lugging 33 duffles through airports, to beaches, and on weekend trips, we chose seven bags that’ll carry what you need carried in a range of scenarios.

Are Away Carry-Ons Worth the Hype?

Although we still prefer the better durability of soft-sided luggage, if you want the look and feel of a hard-sided case, we recommend the Away Carry-On .

We’ve Loved Luggage From Travelpro’s Platinum Elite Line for Nearly a Decade. Here’s Why.

Travelpro Platinum Elite is our most loyal travel companion.

How to Clean Your Luggage

When it comes to cleaning your grimy suitcases, a little maintenance between trips can go a long way. Here’s how to do it.

How to Find the Best Carry-On Suitcase

After five years of testing carry-on luggage, we’ve learned what makes a good suitcase, which parts break first, and what you should look for when buying a bag.

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The Best Suitcases for Checking

As seductive as the idea of carry-on travel can be, life doesn’t always cooperate—sometimes you’re just going to need a bigger suitcase.

After researching 26 pieces of checked luggage and testing five finalists, we can say that the Elite 25-Inch Expandable Spinner Suiter is the best suitcase for most travelers planning to check a bag.

The spinner easily holds two weeks’ worth of clothes, looks and feels fantastic, and comes with a limited lifetime warranty against airline damage.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

Travelpro Platinum Elite 25″ Expandable Spinner Suiter

The best checked bag for most travelers

The bag provides a luxury feel at a reasonable price, with a capacity, warranty, and reliability that should suit most travelers. The 25-inch model should offer plenty of room for most people without going over airline weight limits.

Buying Options

Travelpro Platinum Elite 29-inch Expandable Spinner Suiter

Same suitcase, but bigger

If you need a checked bag that gives you the maximum space allowable and don’t mind paying an overweight-bag fee, the 29-inch model is the way to go.

Buying Options

Upgrade pick

Briggs and Riley Baseline Medium Expandable 25″ Spinner

Hefty luggage for a heftier price

This bag provides most satisfying packing experience money can buy. It can fit an additional week’s worth of clothes, when compressed, in the same amount of space as the Travelpro Platinum Elite.

Buying Options

Briggs and Riley Baseline Extra Large Expandable 31″ Spinner

The same durable bag, but bigger

This is for anyone who needs all the space! Fully expanded, this bag is the biggest we can find. Fair warning—fill it full of clothes, and you’re all but guaranteed to exceed airline weight limits.

Buying Options

Also great

Away The Medium

A great looking and relatively resilient piece of hard-sided luggage that matches our hard-sided carry-on pick, with the same top-of-the-line components—including wheels that roll as smoothly as any we’ve tested even under heavier weights.

Buying Options

Away The Large

If you need to maximize your allowed space and aren’t worried about weight limits, the Away Large is, as the name implies, the largest suitcase that the company makes. Apart from the extra capacity, it’s identical to The Medium.

Buying Options

Our pick

Travelpro Platinum Elite 25″ Expandable Spinner Suiter

The best checked bag for most travelers

The bag provides a luxury feel at a reasonable price, with a capacity, warranty, and reliability that should suit most travelers. The 25-inch model should offer plenty of room for most people without going over airline weight limits.

Buying Options

Travelpro Platinum Elite 29-inch Expandable Spinner Suiter

Same suitcase, but bigger

If you need a checked bag that gives you the maximum space allowable and don’t mind paying an overweight-bag fee, the 29-inch model is the way to go.

Buying Options

The Platinum Elite 25-Inch Expandable Spinner Suiter is the larger, checked-luggage version of our top carry-on pick, and everything we like about its little sibling applies again here. It’s made of a hard-wearing nylon that’s both sleek and durable. It looks and feels like a bag that costs a lot more than it actually does. It’s also surprisingly nimble for a checked bag, thanks to a comfortable, height-adjustable handle and magnetically locking MagnaTrac wheels, which make it noticeably easier to maneuver—especially when loaded with 50 pounds of stuff.

Internally, the Platinum Elite is well organized across its main and lid compartments. The lid comes with a built-in garment folder for formalwear that includes a removable folding board (similar to the one in our Briggs and Riley upgrade pick). Its large capacity is easy to overpack and exceed the 50-pound (22-kilogram) weight limit that most airlines impose. (A luggage scale comes in handy.) But if you’re willing to pay the fee, the Platinum Elite can withstand the weight. Travelpro tests its bags by filling them with 70-pound loads and passing each handle through 7,500 automated lift tests. The combination of toughness and good value makes this the best checked suitcase we’ve found.

Upgrade pick

Briggs and Riley Baseline Medium Expandable 25″ Spinner

Hefty luggage for a heftier price

This bag provides most satisfying packing experience money can buy. It can fit an additional week’s worth of clothes, when compressed, in the same amount of space as the Travelpro Platinum Elite.

Buying Options

Briggs and Riley Baseline Extra Large Expandable 31″ Spinner

The same durable bag, but bigger

This is for anyone who needs all the space! Fully expanded, this bag is the biggest we can find. Fair warning—fill it full of clothes, and you’re all but guaranteed to exceed airline weight limits.

Buying Options

Also great

Away The Medium

A great looking and relatively resilient piece of hard-sided luggage that matches our hard-sided carry-on pick, with the same top-of-the-line components—including wheels that roll as smoothly as any we’ve tested even under heavier weights.

Buying Options

Away The Large

If you need to maximize your allowed space and aren’t worried about weight limits, the Away Large is, as the name implies, the largest suitcase that the company makes. Apart from the extra capacity, it’s identical to The Medium.

Buying Options

For anyone who enjoys the look and simplicity of hard-sided luggage—as well as the comfort of knowing you can’t overpack the confines of your bag—The Medium suitcase from Away is an excellent choice with an excellent warranty. Although soft-sided luggage typically has a longer life span than the ABS plastic or polycarbonate used in hard-sided bags and offers such features as exterior pockets (which make it easier to organize your suitcase), the differences in durability and utility between hard- and soft-sided luggage are increasingly marginal, and plenty of people prefer the aesthetic and additional color options of polycarbonate suitcases. Away builds its luggage with high-quality components, such as wheels that roll well on a variety of surfaces. We tested the Away for three years before first making our recommendation, and we are confident in the long-term durability of the luggage and the reputation of Away’s limited lifetime warranty. Away also makes a larger model of checked luggage, The Large. However, we’ve found that it can be very easy to overpack suitcases of this size, even those that are hard-sided, so you may risk exceeding airline weight limits.

The research

• Why you should trust us
• Why you should (probably) choose soft-sided luggage
• How we picked the best checked luggage
• How we tested suitcases
• The best checked luggage: Travelpro Platinum Elite Expandable Spinner Suiter
• Upgrade pick: Briggs and Riley Baseline Expandable Spinner
• Also-great pick for the best hard-sided luggage: The Medium Suitcase from Away
• The competition
• What to look forward to
• Sources

Why you should trust us

We’ve spent more than 140 hours researching luggage, including interviewing with numerous experts and continuously testing to understand what makes good luggage. In the six years we’ve covered this category, the products have evolved—and so has our thinking about what kind of luggage is best for most people. Based on what’s available and what different travelers prefer, we think the following travel bags are the best checked luggage you can currently find.

Why you should (probably) choose soft-sided luggage

After speaking with luggage designers and frequent travelers, we believe that soft-sided luggage is better for most people because it’s more versatile (having exterior pockets) and—however counterintuitive this may seem—it will most likely last longer.

Based on appearances, many people think that hard-sided luggage (characterized by a rigid plastic or metallic exterior) is more durable than soft-sided luggage. But according to industry testing, that’s not the case. As Scott Applebee, a marketing consultant and former vice president of marketing for Travelpro (which, we’d like to note, sells both types of luggage), told us over email, “The hard shells can crack more readily under the extremes of our drop test and handle-jerking tests.”

Soft-sided luggage is more flexible, quite literally, so these bags tend to bend rather than break and scratch instead of crack. Their soft construction makes it much easier for designers to add exterior pockets and interior organization features than with hard-shell designs. If short-term durability and protection of essentials such as gifts or work equipment is your biggest concern, however, a well-packed piece of hard-sided luggage is your best bet for keeping valuables safe.

“The hard shells can crack more readily under the extremes of our drop test and handle-jerking tests.”
—Scott Applebee, former vice president of marketing for Travelpro

What is the difference between hard-sided and soft-sided luggage?

Most hard-sided luggage is built of ABS plastic, polycarbonate, or a blend of both materials. (There are also aluminum cases, first introduced in the 1930s by Rimowa, that are very strong but are usually too expensive for most travelers—often carrying price tags breaching four figures.) ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) is the cheapest of these materials. However, because of its low strength, ABS is usually blended with polycarbonate. The ratio of this blend helps determine the luggage’s price and durability, but the lower the amount of ABS, the better. Rimowa introduced pure-polycarbonate luggage in 2000 and the luggage has taken off since—we suspect that this is mostly because of its bold aesthetic. Due to its layered manufacturing process, polycarbonate is durable and lightweight—a hard-sided bag in the 29-inch size is about 4 pounds lighter than equivalent soft-sided luggage. However, it doesn’t absorb coloring as easily and shows scratches more easily than ABS-blended luggage.

Soft-sided luggage is commonly made from either polyester or nylon. Polyester is inexpensive, lightweight, and resistant to abrasions. However, it ages faster than nylon and doesn’t resist tearing or cuts as well. That’s why it’s typically found on luggage that costs less than $200. Despite being a little more expensive, nylon typically lasts longer than any other material and allows for the most flexible kind of luggage design. Doug Dyment of OneBag writes, “High-denier industrial nylon fabrics are the way to go: In top quality luggage, the main choices are ballistic and Cordura nylon, differences between the two being largely cosmetic in nature.” (Ballistic nylon has a smooth texture, whereas Cordura feels more like a woven canvas.) “Cordura is more abrasion resistant,” Dyment says, “while ballistic offers higher tear strength. In both fabrics, though, these capabilities are considerably greater than actually needed, so one is unlikely to experience a notable difference.”

Certain duffle bags can also make a great checked-bag option, as they are more pliable and easier to maneuver than the bags we consider in this guide. But they are also more prone to tilting over, and you need to pack them with more care than you would a traditional soft-sided checked bag. If you’re interested in duffle bag options for checked baggage, check out our pick in our guide to duffle bags.

How we picked the best checked luggage

There may be thousands of different types of checked luggage available for sale. Even after we excluded models that didn’t meet our basic criteria—a reliable warranty, reputable luggage reviews, and quality materials—we found hundreds of bags worth testing. Over the years researching luggage, we’ve called dozens of experts to help us narrow the field of top manufacturers. Conversations with these experts helped us understand things such as the function behind nylon and polyester, the difference in wheel-bearing designs, why alloys in telescoping handles matter, and more.

Besides the suggestions from our experts, we researched editorial and user reviews of luggage, making sure to include popular brands like Samsonite and Tumi as well as esoteric names like Filson and Hideo Wakamatsu. In addition to the expert interviews, we’ve spoken with assorted salespeople, brand engineers, and media-relations folks to make sure we found the best models from each brand.

How we tested suitcases

If you want a general rundown of our testing process, check out the corresponding sections from our best carry-on luggage review, because our testing of the larger bags mirrored that process. But we did uncover some differences—mostly having to do with the larger size of checked luggage—that led us to modify our analysis.

The smaller the luggage, the more intricate the design must become to accommodate travelers’ needs. While testing carry-on luggage in the past, we’ve found that company claims of luggage weight and measurements weren’t exactly precise, with capacities exaggerated and weights minimized. Oddly, we didn’t find so much fudging of the numbers for checked bags. Our best guess is that with looser size and weight restrictions for checked luggage, manufacturers aren’t as motivated to manipulate their figures when advertising their larger bags.

When we tested carry-ons, we noticed the varied and individual way each bag handled rough surfaces depending on their wheels and build quality. With checked bags, this wasn’t a problem. Fully packed, the weight of any checked bag carried it over the roughest of surfaces without a strong discernable difference between the models.

With bags this large, the subtler points of comparison aren’t as pronounced. For instance, the handle’s size and shape can significantly change a carry-on bag’s usable space and your overall packing experience. But this doesn’t really matter when space limits aren’t an issue. As a result, we focused on the obvious design comparisons, including how these bags handle when full, how durable the materials they are made from are, and if the bags are comfortable to use.

The best checked luggage: Travelpro Platinum Elite Expandable Spinner Suiter

Our pick

Travelpro Platinum Elite 25″ Expandable Spinner Suiter

The best checked bag for most travelers

The bag provides a luxury feel at a reasonable price, with a capacity, warranty, and reliability that should suit most travelers. The 25-inch model should offer plenty of room for most people without going over airline weight limits.

Buying Options

Travelpro Platinum Elite 29-inch Expandable Spinner Suiter

Same suitcase, but bigger

If you need a checked bag that gives you the maximum space allowable and don’t mind paying an overweight-bag fee, the 29-inch model is the way to go.

Buying Options

For the majority of families who fly 25,000 miles or less per year together, the Travelpro Platinum Elite 25-Inch Expandable Spinner Suiter is the best choice for checked luggage. It’s a durable, attractively styled, well-organized bag for a reasonable price. It holds a full seven days’ worth of clothes for two people and is protected by a warranty which covers carrier damage, as long as you register the bag within 120 days of purchase. (The registration is a very simple process that can be done in 5 minutes with a smartphone: Simply take a picture of the registration code, which comes with the luggage, send that picture to a number Travelpro provides, and fill out the form in the response link.) During a trip to New Zealand, our tester was able to pack two weeks’ worth of clothes—without a laundry stop—and several pieces of camera equipment into the Platinum Magna, the previous-but-largely-identical model of the Platinum Elite, without an issue. Like every large piece of checked luggage we tested, it comes only in a four-wheel (or “spinner”) configuration. Although more wheels means more bits with the potential to break and some reduction of interior space, that’s a necessary compromise for bags this size if you want any hope of managing them in a busy airport.

There’s a long side pocket in the Travelpro Platinum Elite that has a removable plastic pouch for liquids and pastes. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

It’s just enough organization to be useful without becoming restrictive. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

There’s a long side pocket in the Travelpro Platinum Elite that has a removable plastic pouch for liquids and pastes. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

The Platinum Elite’s exterior is made of ballistic nylon, which can take more overall abuse than polycarbonate and will show less wear in the long run. As with carry-ons, we don’t think polycarbonate hard-shell bags are as versatile or durable as soft-sided nylon bags. As mentioned above, hard-shell bags usually weigh about 4 pounds less than soft-sided equivalents, but their increased failure rate and affinity for displaying scratches and wear aren’t worth it unless the bag’s contents really need the extra protection from sharp jabs.

On smooth surfaces, such as those found in airports, it felt as if the bag was almost directing itself across the terminal floor.

The soft fabric design allows for extra flexibility and the inclusion of exterior pockets for quick access to small items. With the Platinum Elite, you get two pockets: a flat one suited for documents and boarding passes, and an accordion-style one that provides extra storage for miscellaneous small items—this can be a lifesaver if you’re traveling with kids and need quick access to extra-small toys, coloring books, clothes, or supplies.

The Platinum Elite’s deep main compartment, when empty. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

When filled, it holds two weeks’ worth of clothes. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

The extra-wide panels help fight wrinkles and keep everything more or less in place during your travels. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

The Platinum Elite’s deep main compartment, when empty. Photo: Caleigh Waldman

During her three-week trip in New Zealand, photographer Caleigh Waldman said of the earlier, nearly identical model in the Platinum line, “On this trip I never stayed in the same location for more than three days and was forced to constantly unpack, repack, and maneuver [the bag]. Usually living out of any suitcase makes me crazy but the many zip compartments [of this bag], both inside and out, make it easy to compartmentalize your things. The pockets, zippers, and interior liner seemed sturdy, and the large pull-back cover allowed me to access everything I had in the bag with ease.”

The Platinum Elite handles beautifully for its size. Its aluminum handle extends to three different heights (38 inches, 40 inches, and 42½ inches). Although every bag we tested for this guide had similar levels of maneuverability, the Travelpro’s MagnaTrac wheels, which align in the same direction, rolled past the rest of the competition with ease. On smooth surfaces, such as those found in airports, it felt as if the bag was almost directing itself across the terminal floor. Waldman appreciated its smooth rolling during her trip, even when it was overpacked, saying, “It was not always easy to maneuver on rough or gravelly surfaces. Overall, though, given the limitations of traveling with this much stuff, I thought [this bag] did a great job moving through a variety of environments.” And it has sealed wheel bearings, which extend the life of the wheels by preventing dirt and grime from entering and breaking down the components as quickly. That’s a feature not usually found on cheaper bags, and chances are, if a bag isn’t clearly advertising sealed bearings, you should assume it doesn’t have them. If for whatever reason your wheels do break, you can easily swap them out yourself with Travelpro’s readily available replacements.

A 2-inch-wide expansion zipper runs along three sides of the Platinum Elite, allowing the bag to accordion-open a touch if you need the extra space (although we found it more useful as a way to compress what you’ve already packed than as a true additional-space-providing feature).

The Platinum Elite weighs 9 pounds, 8 ounces when empty, which is average to heavy among checked bags, but that’s a workable weight for the bag’s spacious 6,982 cubic-inch interior—twice what its carry-on sibling can hold! But as with carry-ons, weight shouldn’t be your primary concern when selecting luggage this large, because all the bags we tested felt about equally heavy once fully packed. The important thing is that in our tests the Platinum Elite swallowed up a week’s worth of clothes for two people with no problem and had a good deal of room to spare.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

We should note that bags of this size can almost hold too much. The Platinum Elite already weighs over 9 pounds, so when you pack it to its limits, you may have trouble keeping it below the 50-pound weight limit of most airlines—and that means extra fees. But this is true of all checked luggage.

During her New Zealand trip, Caleigh Waldman packed the Platinum Magna 2 29-inch model for two weeks with enough clothes, toiletries, and different types of shoes and activewear for the terrain. Though she didn’t fill the bag completely, she still found that her luggage weighed over the 50-pound limit. “Every flight I took, I had to cough up the overweight-baggage fee, and it was a monster to carry up stairs and toss into car trunks,” she said.

Travelpro uses a self-repairing nylon coil along with Supra zipper heads throughout its bag, instead of ones made by YKK. Though we prefer YKK zippers, this isn’t enough to change our recommendation, and we still stand by the long-term durability of the zippers on the Travelpro.

Upgrade pick: Briggs and Riley Baseline Expandable Spinner

Upgrade pick

Briggs and Riley Baseline Medium Expandable 25″ Spinner

Hefty luggage for a heftier price

This bag provides most satisfying packing experience money can buy. It can fit an additional week’s worth of clothes, when compressed, in the same amount of space as the Travelpro Platinum Elite.

Buying Options

Briggs and Riley Baseline Extra Large Expandable 31″ Spinner

The same durable bag, but bigger

This is for anyone who needs all the space! Fully expanded, this bag is the biggest we can find. Fair warning—fill it full of clothes, and you’re all but guaranteed to exceed airline weight limits.

Buying Options

If you fly more than 25,000 miles per year, it’s worth investing in luggage that goes beyond the minimums and somehow improves your travel experience. The Briggs and Riley Baseline Medium Expandable 25″ Spinner is that kind of bag. It costs about twice as much as our main pick, but after using all of these bags side by side, it’s clear that there is more than twice as much value hidden within this luggage: This is one of the best checked luggage systems we’ve found for international travel. The Briggs and Riley’s expansion/compression system is superior to anything else we’ve seen—it lets you fit an additional week’s worth of clothes into the same external dimensions as the Travelpro has.

To do this, you pull upward on two plastic handles inside the bag, which extends its depth a full 2½ inches. Load the bag as full as you need to, and zip it closed without putting stress on the zippers. Then, you simply push down on the bag. This compresses it back down again, and a latch mechanism keeps it securely in place. Unlike cheaper zippered expansion systems that are either fully open or closed (like the Delsey’s), this one can lock in at variable degrees of expansion or compression. It’s unique and satisfying to use. Pressed down, the bag measures 25 by 19.5 by 10.5 inches, with 5,118.6 cubic inches of interior space. Expanded, the case measures 25.5 by 20 by 13.5 inches, with roughly 6,885 cubic inches of interior space.

Briggs and Riley also makes a 31-inch Extra Large version of this bag with nearly 10,000 cubic inches of interior space. But we can’t see the point of a bag this large. As it is, you can easily exceed most airlines’ weight limits packing the Medium to capacity.

The Briggs and Riley expansion/compression system lets you fit an additional week’s worth of clothes into the same external dimensions as the Travelpro.

The Baseline Medium’s exterior is wrapped in 1,680-denier ballistic nylon, which is durable and puncture resistant. But what’s more impressive is what’s underneath the nylon. The Baseline’s frame is the strongest we’ve seen among any of the soft-sided luggage we tested. This bag can take considerable pressure from any angle. As with our top checked luggage pick, the Travelpro, the Baseline Medium has two external pockets: a small one for tickets and passports and a larger one for small items or light outerwear.

Similar to its carry-on version, the Baseline Medium’s handrail tubes are on the outside of the bag, which makes the inside back wall almost completely flat and allows for easier packing because you have no crevices to work around. We liked this feature for lighter carry-on luggage, where the exterior plastic handrail tubes can protect the bag when going over an edge without the risk of too much damage. This changes when you’re bouncing a 50-pound bag over a curb. In this case, exposing the handrail system seems like an unnecessary risk when there’s so much available room for an internal rail system.

Also-great pick for the best hard-sided luggage: The Medium Suitcase from Away

Also great

Away The Medium

A great looking and relatively resilient piece of hard-sided luggage that matches our hard-sided carry-on pick, with the same top-of-the-line components—including wheels that roll as smoothly as any we’ve tested even under heavier weights.

Buying Options

Away The Large

If you need to maximize your allowed space and aren’t worried about weight limits, the Away Large is, as the name implies, the largest suitcase that the company makes. Apart from the extra capacity, it’s identical to The Medium.

Buying Options

We still think most travelers would be better off with one of our soft-sided picks than a hard-sided carry-on; soft-sided luggage shows less wear and typically lasts longer than hard-sided luggage. But if you prefer the look of hard-sided luggage or the security of knowing that you can’t overpack your suitcase, then The Medium suitcase from Away is the one we recommend. Its wheels and zipper are as well made as those of our soft-sided picks, and its polycarbonate showed fewer scratches than its hard-sided competitors. It’s backed by a limited lifetime warranty.

The Medium weighs 9.9 pounds and measures 26 by 18.5 by 11 inches—a fairly standard weight and size for checked luggage this size. (By comparison, the Travelpro Platinum Elite 25-Inch Expandable Spinner weighs 9.8 pounds and measures 28 by 18.5 by 11.75 inches.) If you need extra room, the Away Large offers the maximum allowed space in a piece of checked luggage. The Large weighs 11.6 lbs and measures 29 by 20.5 by 12.5 inches. However, it’s easier to overpack and exceed airline weight limits with bags this large, which is why we recommend the Medium for most people.

The Away’s modern and minimalist look comes at a cost: Its polycarbonate shell is ultimately (according to every luggage designer we’ve ever interviewed) more likely to break than the nylon fabric of our other picks is to tear. Still, the shell feels similar to that used on more high-end (and significantly more expensive) suitcases, such as the $1,000-plus Rimowa Essential Check-In M; it’s strong and flexible, and the Away itself feels good in your hands. When we first started testing the Away in 2016, we found that flexibility to be a liability, especially on airport carpets. The first version of the Away that I tested tended to flex into itself and jam up its own wheels when I pushed it in front of me. But I haven’t experienced the issue with any of the latest models of this suitcase.

The interior of the Away is almost as bare bones as its exterior. Unlike our other picks, the Away has no included suiter or suit folder, but you can buy one for $85 . The interior of the Away is split in half; one side closes with a zippered flap, and the other side has a built-in compression panel, which works decently well. Away builds its luggage with impressive components. The wheels are noticeably better than those on any of the hard-sided competitors we’ve tested. We’ve rolled these wheels across every conceivable surface, from cobbles to the smoothest airport surfaces that felt like a skating rink, and they were always a pleasure to use. Away formerly used YKK zippers, which are widely regarded as some of the best zippers in the world; as of 2023, however, the company no longer does, at least not exclusively. We’ll keep an eye on how the zippers on the newer models we’re using perform.

We tested Away luggage for three years before making our recommendation, traveling with it ourselves across the country, and lending models of the bag to several testers and frequent travelers to see how they enjoyed using it. We tested Away luggage for three years before making our recommendation, traveling with it ourselves across the country, and lending models of the bag to several testers and frequent travelers to see how they enjoyed using it. Away makes two similar models of checked suitcases with an expandable zipper, The Medium Flex and The Large Flex. For all intents and purposes, these are the same overall bags as the standard Medium and Large, except for the expanding center zipper and the price (they each cost $50 more). Personally, I’m not a fan of expanding zippers on suitcases. It feels like potentially just one more thing to break. Also, you increase the likelihood of exceeding the airline’s weight limit. But some people may prefer having the extra flexibility.

Like our other picks, the Away pairs with its matching carry-on: The models are virtually identical except for their sizes. It’s visually appealing to match your luggage sets, but the real value, of course, in matching your carry-on to your checked luggage is that the smaller suitcase can, when you’re back home, nest within the larger one. (This holds true for every set of luggage we’ve ever tested. Here’s why: Nesting luggage is the most economical way for luggage manufacturers to ship their wares from their factories overseas.)

The competition

The Delsey Helium Aero, our previous hard-sided pick, comes in both a 25-inch and a 29-inch model, so you can choose how much capacity you need. Like the Away, this bag is made of 100 percent polycarbonate, so it should last longer than cheaper and less durable ABS plastic suitcases. We think infrequent travelers will still be satisfied. However, despite the fact that the two companies’ bags bear similar prices, Delsey’s 10-year limited warranty doesn’t match Away’s limited lifetime warranty.

Away Expandable Large: Away’s soft-sided luggage entry was sturdy and good looking. However, the design mimicked the clamshell opening of Away’s original hard-sided luggage. Instead of designing a soft-sided suitcase with one large compartment, a handy feature when packing large pieces of luggage, Away split the Expandable into two smaller, difficult-to-pack halves. (Update: Away discontinued the line.)

Briggs and Riley Torq Medium Spinner: Briggs and Riley makes excellent luggage, but we don’t think you need to spend this much on a hard-sided case without any extra frills.

Briggs and Riley Sympatico Spinner: We’re intrigued that Briggs and Riley decided to combine a compression system similar to the one in our Upgrade pick, the Baseline, with a hardshell design. However, experts agree that soft-sided luggage is more durable in the long term.

Samsonite Silhouette Sphere 2 Spinner: Samsonite is known around the world for luggage. But we weren’t impressed with this model or any of the others we researched (Samsonite Winfield 2, Samsonite Carbon 1 DLX Expandable Spinner, Samsonite Lift 2 Spinner). The attention to detail seems to be lacking when compared with our recommended models: Luggage handles are more uncomfortable to use, wheels chatter, and internal spaces are less functional than we like. (As of 2023, the Silhouette Sphere 2, the Carbon 1 DLX, and the Lift 2 have all vanished from Samsonite’s site.)

Pelican BA30 Vacationer: This was a professional-grade piece of luggage designed to protect expensive equipment. It was stronger and a bit more expensive than most people need. But it was an interesting idea for world travelers looking for a (nearly literally) bombproof piece of luggage—and it’s been discontinued.

Rimowa Essential Check-In M: Rimowa defined hard-sided luggage in the 1940s and redefined it in 2000 when it introduced polycarbonate luggage. But paying just over $1,000 for “virgin German polycarbonate” is silly. These bags are smart-looking, though.

Rimowa Classic Check-In M: Ever wondered how much people pay for those handsome aluminum pieces of luggage? Well, now you know: at least four figures. This thing is twice as expensive as a ticket to Europe and is little more than a status symbol.