If you’re a travel enthusiast or even someone who travels occasionally, whether your trips extend for weeks around the world by plane or for days on a car trip, investing in a good travel bag is essential.
The bag is an essential part of preparing for travel, and bags with poor construction and unsuitable materials for your requirements can be a hindrance to fully enjoying the trip.
The report outlines some steps that are important when choosing the right and suitable bag for your trips.
Choosing the basis of the bag
There are some things that must be available in a travel bag to ensure that it will be an additional factor in enjoying your trip:
- Make sure that the telescopic handle of the bag lowers to the level of the bag and does not protrude above it, and also make sure that the handle has several different lengths and at least one of them is comfortable for you to pull.
- The presence of two handles connected to the bag well on two sides of the bag – for carrying the bag – is essential.
- If you are traveling by plane, the weight of the bag is given priority followed by its dimensions, while if traveling by car, it is better to give priority to size and to have flexible material. But in the case of traveling by train or ship, the hard bag may be the best choice. If your trips are multiple, try to balance these factors as much as possible when choosing.
- You should always check the regulations of the airline you will be traveling with, and how they apply to your bags in terms of weight and dimensions, whether the bags are checked or carried with you in the aircraft cabin.
The most obvious factors that attract people when buying travel bags are the number of wheels of the bag and the manufacturing material.
Two-wheeled or four-wheeled?
In recent years, different hard bags from those that were available in the past have spread, so how can one determine which one?
Bags with wheels can be either two or four, and bags with two wheels give the bag stability on sloping surfaces and are easier to move through city streets, especially if the sidewalks are uneven, but their horizontal movement is limited.
The opposite is true for bags with four wheels, as they cannot be left without holding on to a curved surface, but they give complete freedom of horizontal movement and thus are lighter on the shoulders and back.
Hard or soft?
When choosing the material, whether it is hard or flexible, this depends on several factors, as flexible fabric bags are lighter in weight and more items can be placed inside them, and they can often be expanded by 25% of their original size.
Also, they can be placed in tight places and take advantage of the flexibility of the fabric, which protects the bag itself in absorbing shocks.
However, they are often not waterproof and do not provide sufficient protection for what is inside them, and if they are not of high quality, they are often prone to tearing or theft because they are easy to tear.
As for hard bags, they provide the necessary protection for the items inside them, and they are waterproof and theft-proof as well, as they cannot be torn.
But one of its most important drawbacks is that it does not have external pockets and cannot be squeezed into tight places, and it does not provide extra space for items, and if it is made of poor quality materials, it will quickly break.
The color
Choosing the color of the bag is an important matter that many people do not pay attention to, as most travelers carry dark bags, so to easily distinguish your bag while it is on the baggage conveyor, it is better to choose a distinctive color or a different shape from the prevailing ones.
You may avoid bright colors or cartoon drawings on business trips where they do not match the formal clothes and the nature of the mission, but they will definitely save a lot of time, especially if your travel is multi-stop “transit”.
Choosing steps
You must make sure of the durability of the bag before completing the purchase process, as no one likes to run in the airport with a bag with a missing wheel or a broken handle. To ensure the durability of the bag and its suitability for you, you should follow the following:
- If the bag is made of waterproof fabric, do not hesitate to test it yourself.
- Internal pockets are very important for organization, so you should compare between the selected bags in which can maintain a better organization system.
- Try the bag’s zipper, wheel, handle, and handle more than once.
- If it is a well-known brand, make sure there is a warranty certificate. If you are shopping online, it is better to buy the bag at least a month before the travel date so that you have the opportunity to replace it in case of any defects.
- Bring a measuring tape with you and check the measurements of the bag to avoid excess size fines, and if you do not know the rules of the airline concerned or in case of multiple airlines, it is better not to exceed the length of any side of the bag carried inside the aircraft to ninety centimeters, while the length of the large loaded bag should not exceed 155 centimeters.
- It is always better for the weight of the bag to be as light as possible, so it is better for its weight to be empty about 3.5 kilograms only.
