The Best Luggage of 2022

Owning a well-made, abrasion-resistant, thoughtfully designed suitcase or bag can help make traveling feel breezy and manageable. The trick to avoiding lousy luggage is by traveling with as many different pieces of checked luggage, carry-on luggage, under-seat carry-on, and travel backpacks you can lay your hands on. Unfortunately, most people don’t have the time or money to invest in this sort of research. Fortunately, your curious friends at Reviewed do.

Whether you prefer to travel light or insist upon bringing every scrap of clothing you own on your next adventure, we’ve got the perfect bag to carry all of it for you.

What You Should Know About Luggage

• Price: When it comes to luggage, we advise you to spend more if you travel more. High-end luggage tends to be more durable, so you’ll have to replace it less often. The same can’t always be said for personal carry-on-sized bags. Sometimes, as these smaller bags, purses, and backpacks can be used as fashion accessories as part of your daily commute, the price of a bag is commensurate with its brand’s recognition, rather than its durability or utility.
• Wheels: if you prefer your luggage to glide through an airport concourse on wheels, four wheels are better than two. No matter whether you’re pushing or pulling your bag along, you’ll find it just as maneuverable. That said, two-wheeled bags are still a good get—they’re more portable and can often cost less. For shopping for bags designed to fit under an airline seat, avoid wheels if you can: they eat into the already limited amount of space bags sized to slip under an airplane seat offer. -**Handles:** Retractable handles should slide in and out of position, smoothly, and offer at least a couple of height settings to accommodate different sized users. This style of handle, however, isn’t desirable in under seat carry-on luggage: the handle mechanism takes up a lot of space in such a small bag. Built-in fabric or leather handles should be wide and padded to make the weight of what’s inside of your bag feel like less of a strain on your hand. Handles located on multiple sides of a bag are a win, as they make it easy to grab it out of an overhead bin, no matter how you had to place it in there.
• Organization: Bags that offer a number of easily accessible exterior pockets for small items like a passport, smartphone, or plane tickets are a smart buy. Look for bags with a large main compartment that can be used with packing cubes, or stuffed full of a number of loose items such as a water bottle, snacks, or a hoodie. If you plan on using your bag for work trips or having it double as a tote for your daily commute, be sure that any laptop compartment, tablet sleeve, or admin panels built into it will suit your needs.

Travel backpacks are kind of their own thing. When buying one, you should look for the following:

• A main, inner compartment that opens up flat, like a suitcase, to aid in packing and unpacking.
• The inner compartment should boast at least one zippered pocket for organizing your clothes, toiletries and other sundries.
• A main compartment with compression panels and straps to compress your cargo and keep it from shifting during transport is a bonus that allows the pack to be used with or without packing cubes.
• An area that military types often call an "admin panel," which can store a laptop or tablet, pens, maps, tickets, passports, you name it. It's most helpful in the detachable part of a daypack, so you can carry valuables while leaving the cargo bag at their hotel.
• Speaking of daypacks, travel backpacks that feature one are very handy.
• A travel pack should come with an internal frame to help protect your belongings and keep your stuff from shifting around on your back while you travel.
• A padded hip belt is a must: they’re designed to transfer the weight of your pack from your shoulders to your hips, helping to save you from discomfort and injury.
• Whenever possible, load straps should be integrated into the pack’s shoulder straps to pull the pack closer to the back, transferring more of its weight to the hips.
• Zippers that can be used with a TSA-compatible lock are essential for slowing down thieves and ensuring that none of your gear is lost while in transit. Some packs come with fabric loops for this purpose. You don’t want that. Metal zipper locks are where it’s at.
• While there are few bags out there that are truly waterproof, you should at least look for one that's weather-resistant. Lacking that, invest in a rain cover to ensure the contents of your bag don't get soaked in a downpour.

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