Hard or soft luggage?

Traveling internationally to a large city for two weeks. Better to buy soft or hard luggage? Any specific luggage brand to look for?

Are you looking for style, durability, ...? Also, what's your price range?

I am not concern about style, I want durable and sturdy luggage. My budget is $400.

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Briggs and Riley. Unlimited lifetime warranty. Wear and tear and baggage handler damage included.

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+1 for Briggs & Riley and its lifetime warranty. Read about hard shell v/s soft shell luggage @ http://tinyurl.com/24jvvvw. Hope this helps.

Get a Rimowa.. lighest luggage around!

I recently bought new luggage. After spending alot of time researching online deciding what to buy, I settled for the soft shelled Eagle Creek Tarmac 20" and 25" and have been very pleased. Very well built and designed, very light, with tons of storage compartments. It is also reasonably priced (I paid less than $200 for each) and it comes with a lifetime warranty that even covers damage caused by the airline. Google search "Eagle Creek Tarmac reviews". The reviews are nearly all positive. www.eBags.com (not eBay) is also a good place to read reviews.
I also read good stuff about Briggs and Riley, but they are VERY expensive.

Originally Posted by Scuttlebutt

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Briggs and Riley. Unlimited lifetime warranty. Wear and tear and baggage handler damage included.

/Thread

Originally Posted by roderickpike

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+1 for Briggs & Riley and its lifetime warranty. Read about hard shell v/s soft shell luggage @ http://tinyurl.com/24jvvvw. Hope this helps.

+1. I have one carry-on, one rolling garment bag and one large suitcase. Been very pleased with them.

Soft shell all the way.

First - most soft shell bags have an internal hard shell on 5 of the 6 sides.
Second - Hard shells scratch and look like crap.
Third - soft shells expand when you need to more in your bag and flex when you need to cram the bag in somewhere.


As for brands... it doesn't really matter. Here's what breaks :
1) Wheels : they get gunked up
2) Zippers: the tabs break off
3) the expanding handle. particularly the mechanism.

here what to look for:
1) Non-black. Get something business-like but not black. Everyone has black. Khaki, green, blue, are, brown. I've got a khaki, it gets dirty, but no one walks off with it and I can spot it right away.
2) 2 polled expanding handle. When you lift your bag with the handle expanded, your elbow goes right through the handles. There's a trend of a single pole, which means your elbow hits it, making it hard to carry.
3) bad balance. Is it stable standing up? with stuff on top? Throw some crap into it at the luggage store and see if it's tippy.

OOOh. You said soft shell up there - and I thought - shell cordovan luggage. Now thats an idea.

Originally Posted by Raul_J

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Traveling internationally to a large city for two weeks. Better to buy soft or hard luggage? Any specific luggage brand to look for?

What's the content? The whole point for going hard shell is for protection of fragile goods.

If it's going to be checked luggage... I recommend Briggs & Riley. It looks so darn boring ... but it makes it through the baggage handling with flying colors.