The Finest Suitcases in 2024

Traveling out of a suitcase that doesn’t work for you — in a word — sucks. Without the best suitcase, your clothes get wrinkled, your gear gets scrambled, and more and more time goes down the drain as you pack and repack endlessly. The best vacations, weekend getaways, or day trips only seem to go so well with the best luggage on hand. 

But selecting the best luggage can amount to taking on the internet itself. There is a huge array of options, from wheeled suitcases to weekender bags, travel duffels, and backpacks. To choose one is to untangle this knot, relating characteristics of a suitcase to your travel needs and guesstimating durability, comfort, and more. 

GearJunkie’s suitcase testers brought 30+ combined years of experience in travel-oriented lifestyles to this roundup. Interests and focuses vary widely among the team: CrossFit, water sports, running, adventure racing, rock climbing, tradeshows and conferences, and general pleasure travel have all caused us to act on airline app alerts. 

You can head straight to our comprehensive buyer’s guide and FAQ at the bottom of the article. Our comparison chart can also help you make a decision. Otherwise, read our complete gear guide below.

The Best Suitcases in 2024

Suitcases Comparision Chart

How We Tested Suitcases

Travel amounts to a second full-time job for most gear testers, and GearJunkie’s team is no different. Our frequent fliers packed their suitcases for everything from day commutes to weekend junkets to weeks-long international adventures. Needs came from a wide variety of travel tasks: remote work at beachside bars, multi-stop airport connections, rock climbing, road trips, and casual city outings.

Key factors were capacity and comfort, versatility of use, and the suitcase’s ability to help the tester stay organized. Our testers made notes on style but paid the most attention to what each suitcase most helped them accomplish. Bulky, heavy-duty suitcases work best for cramming with mounds of gear and clothing in a race against check-out time; low-profile suitcases with plenty of pockets and compartments can make for smooth day trips. 

Our testers paid special attention to how each suitcase performed in differentiated environments. The best wheeled carry-on luggage might still roll if we took it between international airports and sandy beach towns. A duffel bag can make a great high-volume gear bag, but cramp your style (and shoulders) if you’re facing a long walk.  

We mostly used suitcases for their intended purpose, but did allow for some crossover use. The Jack Wolfskin Traveltopia 45 duffel, for instance, did duty as a general gear cache, a carry-on for weekend getaways, and even a crag pack.

Why You Should Trust Us

Each tester involved in this article travels frequently for professional and recreational reasons. Since the mid-2000s, testers have crisscrossed the United States and the planet to pursue stories, sporting events, trade shows and conventions, lifestyles, and adventures. 

Lead tester Sam Anderson has lived out of suitcases for months of his life — between extensive rock climbing travel, long-distance relationships, and friends and family scattered across the U.S. Sam has learned on the job, stuffing bags with equipment as varied as burly trad racks, cameras and laptops, and dress clothes for weddings. 

His packing lists need to be precise and complete — and so does the way he configures his bags. Choosing the right bag is also key. Sam has pitted his suitcases against desert dust at Red Bull Rampage, torrential rain in Yosemite National Park, and too many delayed flights to count. 

Buyer’s Guide: How to Choose a Suitcase

Size

To size a suitcase, you should start with what you know you need to bring with you. Try concentrating your needs and wants in the gear department, then consider the suitcase when you’re done. 

For most people, volume doesn’t mean anything — if you know what 35 L worth of clothing looks like, you (like us) may need help. Instead, focus on dimensions. 

Carry-on luggage size limits, generally, are the following:

• U.S.: 22” x 14” x 9”
• International: 21.5” x 15.5” x 9” (though it varies more).

Most roller bags like the Eagle Creek Gear Warrior XE 2-Wheel 30” are designed specifically for air travel, so they follow these general guidelines. But not all luggage does. 

If you’re not traveling on an airline and you don’t have to care, we recommend focusing on weight and details like handles and reinforcement. You might frequently find yourself yanking, shoving, and carrying your luggage from here to there. You don’t want it to be any more awkward than it has to be. 

Fully loaded, the biggest bag on this list, the 5.11 Tactical Mission Ready 3.0 90L, weighed more than some of our testers. You don’t want to have to shoulder one of those bad boys in a busy foreign bus station or boat ramp.

Roller Bag or No? 

There’s no denying it, roller bags have become the international standard. Trying to calculate the number of roller bags sold each year would take precious years off the life of anyone trying to count. 

And they’re great for some things — and awful for others. 

Conventional roller bags with cheap plastic casters do just fine on light duty from the jetway to the rideshare trunk. But if you take one on a potholed rural street, a beach, or a hiking trail, you’re risking a busted wheel and a very uncomfortable carry. 

If you tend to get into the nitty-gritty while traveling, try roller bags like the 5.11 Tactical Mission Ready 3.0 90L, with its lugged wheels that support 150 pounds.

Handles/Carry

More and more, luggage designers appear to be asking one worthy and overdue question: why not put a handle on every surface of this thing? And even: why not make it a sturdy one?

Gone are the days when a suitcase or backpack should only have one handle on the top. Most suitcase builders now include a side carry handle attached to otherwise unused space. Some even put a carry handle on the top, bottom, left, and right side of the rig — like the Eagle Creek Gear Warrior XE 2-Wheel 30”.

Material

If you’re worried about airlines damaging your luggage, stop now: SITA reported as recently as 2019 that baggage handlers damage less than 1/1,000th of bags. 

That doesn’t mean it’s not important to consider what your suitcase is made of. A lot depends on what you will do with the luggage. Hard-sided suitcases don’t suffer snags or rips like soft-sided units do, but they can also crack if they end up at the bottom of a heavy pile. 

The best soft bags are made with durable external materials like Cordura or nylon. The NEMO Vantage 30 Adventure Backpack is made with durable recycled PET, and the Peak Design Travel Duffel 35 is made with 600-denier nylon. Both have held up very well to rough travel. But even if they don’t abrade, soft bags can be crushed. So don’t keep your Fabergé eggs in there.

Durability

Durability in a suitcase often comes down to choosing the right unit for the use cases involved. For suitcases that will live a rough-and-tumble life, pay attention to areas that absorb a lot of abuse: corners and bottom panels. A kick plate, between the wheels on a roller bag, usually isn’t a bad thing. And reinforced corners and stitching can also help. 

There’s also no getting around the fact that any suitcase, duffel, or backpack is only as good as its zipper. Try to reduce the strain on your bags’ zippers by avoiding overloading.

Compartments

How organized do you need to be? Entries in this article range from techy backpacks with dedicated shoe compartments to straight-up duffels with a few pockets, like the Jack Wolfskin Traveltopia 45 Liter Duffel Bag. 

The reality of the matter is, sometimes you don’t need to keep it all that tight. In those instances, a main compartment and a pocket or two is plenty to stay happy. For the most businesslike travelers, highly compartmentalized units like the Thule Subterra 2 27L Backpack can feel more appropriate. 

FAQ