How to choose luggage

Luggage is an unusually easy purchase to get wrong, because the shelf gives you no way to tell a $70 case from a $250 one. They have the same silhouette, the same number of wheels and the same promise. The difference is in the grade of the plastic, the size of the wheel bearing and whether anyone will repair it — none of which is visible.

The fix is to stop comparing products and start answering questions, in this order. Each one eliminates a large part of the market, and by the fifth you are choosing between two or three bags rather than two thousand.

Question 1: How many flights a year?

This is the question that decides your budget, and almost nobody asks it first. Luggage does not wear out by age; it wears out by use, and the wear lands almost entirely on the wheels and the telescoping handle.

• Under five flights a year. Buy on price. A budget case will outlive your need for it, and a long warranty is value you will never consume. Start with our budget carry-on picks.
• Five to twenty.Buy a mainstream brand with a real warranty — Samsonite, Travelpro or Delsey. This is where repairability starts paying for itself. Our brand ranking covers who does what.
• Over twenty. Buy for the wheels and the warranty and nothing else. See the business carry-on roundup.

Question 2: What size do you actually need?

Most travelers need fewer pieces than they buy. A carry-on covers up to about five days for one person, or a week with compression cubesand access to laundry. A mid-size checked bag — 24 to 25 inches — is the most useful second piece, because it is hard to overfill past a 50 lb limit. The 28 to 30-inch case is the one that sits in a closet for most people and gets overloaded when it does come out.

If you are buying a carry-on, the sizing detail that matters most is whether the body is 20 or 22 inches. A 22-inch case is fine on US domestic routes and fails many strict overseas sizers; a 20-inch case clears both. Our carry-on size guide and airline size table have the numbers, and how to measure luggage shows how to check a bag the way an airline does.

Question 3: Hard shell or soft?

Hardside protects fragile contents, looks cleaner and wipes down. Softside is lighter, absorbs overpacking, squeezes into a bin that is already three-quarters full, and gives you external pockets you can reach in a queue. Neither is better; they fail differently. The honest split: buy hardside if you carry cameras, bottles or electronics, and softside if you routinely pack right up to the limit. Our hardside vs softside guide covers the trade properly, and the materials guide explains why two hardshell cases at different prices behave very differently.

Question 4: Two wheels or four?

Four-wheel spinners glide beside you and take the weight off your wrist, which is why they dominate the market. Two-wheel uprights use larger wheels recessed into the shell, so they handle curbs, cobbles and gravel far better and cannot be sheared off sideways. Airport-to-hotel travel favors spinners; city walking and rough ground favor uprights. The full argument is in our spinner vs 2-wheel guide.

Question 5: What is the warranty, and is there anyone to honor it?

Two separate things, and the second matters more. Nearly every luggage warranty is a limited warranty against manufacturing defects, and none of the mainstream ones covers airline damage — that is always a claim against the carrier, usually within a short window after the flight. What a good warranty actually buys you is a repair path for the wheel or handle failure that is statistically the most likely thing to go wrong.

So ask whether the brand maintains an authorized repair network. Samsonite and Travelpro do. Budget and direct-to-Amazon brands generally do not, which means the same failure ends the bag. That gap is worth real money if you fly often and nothing at all if you fly twice a year — which brings you back to question one.

Things that are not worth deciding on

• Built-in TSA locks. Useful, universal at most price points, and not a differentiator. They deter opportunism; they are not security. See our lock guide.
• USB ports. The battery has to be removable to fly, which makes the port far less convenient than it looks — details in our USB luggage guide.
• Expansion zippers. Genuinely useful for the return leg, but an expanded bag is over the carry-on depth limit on essentially every airline. Never treat expansion as packing capacity on departure.
• Color. Worth choosing last, and worth almost nothing in price. A bright luggage tag identifies a black case at a carousel just as well.

One bag, or a set?

Buy a set if you are equipping a household from nothing and need several pieces at once — the cost per case is unbeatable. Buy individually if you fly regularly, because you will want the money concentrated in the carry-on, which does most of the work and takes most of the abuse. Our luggage sets roundup covers the first case and best carry-on luggage the second.