I Took Three Flights to Test the New Carry-On from the Inventors of Wheeled Luggage. Here’s My Review of the Travelpro VersaPack

Today, airports are a veritable magical mystery tour of people clutching checked luggage, roller luggage, carry-on luggage, travel accessories and backpacks everywhere in a kaleidoscope of ballistic nylon and extruded plastic. But it hasn’t always been this way. Luggage didn’t even have wheels until the 1980s, when an enterprising airline pilot decided to design an easier-to-travel-with and tougher carry-on.

In 1987, Northwest Airlines 747 pilot Robert Plath sold his two wheeled Rollaboard design to fellow airline professionals so that today, all us civilian four-wheeled spinner suitcase addicts could run. For years since then, all over the world, I’ve coveted the unassuming black roller bags I see beside pilots and trailing behind connection-bound flight attendants—a real insider’s choice of carry case for the professionals who value quality and craft over status. So when I heard that the company Plath founded, Travelpro, was coming out with a new four-wheeled suitcase, the Travelpro VersaPack+ carry-on ($350; $297), designed to compete with newer suitcases with more style and design innovations, I had to try it.

Short answer: Travelpro is still bringing the innovation. The luggage line leans in to the current craze for packing cubes by including two of them in the case, cleverly attached to a flat board that keeps clothes securely in place. The cubes are breathable mesh and zip individually. On the last of the three trips I where I carried my TravelPro VersaPack+, I fit a week’s worth of underwear, bras and a set of shorts pajamas in one cube and two sets of workout clothes—leggings, shorts, jog bra and T-shirts, in the other. The Travelpro's handy clips make sure that, when you strap down that half of the clamshell case, the cubes stay put.

The suitcase also comes with two shoe bags and a laundry bag. (Confession: The self-satisfaction I feel when I turn up at an airport knowing that my soiled clothes and dusty shoes aren’t dirtying my sweaters and silks in a jumbled suitcase is the calm I need to face the cattle drive that is air travel today.) There’s a small plastic zip compartment that fits a wet swimsuit, and a full-length lid pocket that kept a pair of my cotton pants crisp when I folded them three ways.

The interior is wipeable, fashioned from postconsumer plastic water bottles, and I can confirm it does not retain odor. The exterior has four sets of protruding double wheels to really speed across the concourse. And bless, it’s a double-pole handle design, which I prefer since I tend to tip single-handle suitcases on tight turns. The only minor quibble I had with the handle was that the four-stop adjustable height handle would sometimes get stuck at a too-short height, until I jostled it a bit.

At $300, the soft-side spinner I have is a good value, considering other luggage brands at this price point don’t come with the extra accessories, aren’t made with such quality materials (the wheels and the thick anti-ballistic nylon fabric) and, this is really key, don’t come with Travelpro’s 100-day free return trial and lifetime limited warranty, including a three-year trusted companion promise to cover damage caused by a known airline.

And, lest I be too performance-based in my enthusiasm for this little guy, can I just say that I’m impressed with how Travelpro’s moved out of its all-black comfort zone and is offering VersaPack in icy and deep blue as well as sage green? I carry the case with a matching VersaPack Underseat Tote ($145) in elemental blue, and appreciate how it has an exterior padded pocket for my laptop, a spacious boxy interior and how it balances perfectly atop my rolling case without slipping off if I use the trolly strap. Another plus—though soft-sided, the boxy structure of the tote means that it won’t expand sideways as generously as more blob-shaped totes, which in my case is a good thing since I tend to decide at the last minute that I need an extra couple hair appliances, notebooks and watercolor sets and I’ll shove them in if I can, which ends in jumbled madness at the security checkpoint.

Look—I’d love to one day be one of those impossibly cool women who glide into an airplane carrying only a half empty designer handbag and a stick of gum. But I don’t have all the time in the world to wait for checked luggage, and my trips involve lots of social and professional obligations, i.e., lots of clothes and notes. I need luggage that’s as much of a workhorse as I am, while helping me look as competent as possible. I’ll have what the pilots are having.