The Best Gear for Travel in 2025

A well-packed bag is one that contains less than you think you need but everything you actually need. If possible, fitting everything into one carry-on and personal item will give you more freedom compared to checking a bag or two. You’ll be glad you did if (and when) things don’t go according to plan.

While carry-on-only isn’t feasible (or advisable) for every trip—especially extended business trips or weddings where you need multiple outfits to maintain appearances—if in doubt, it’s better to cut.

Carry-on roller bag

Top pick

This spinner carry-on offers the best balance of size, value, reliability, and durability, with high-end details. It’s backed by a lifetime warranty.

Since 2015, we’ve researched several dozen suitcases and gone hands-on with the 67 most promising candidates in a variety of tests—including having active flight attendants test bags for us in a fake plane fuselage in their training facility. We determined that for most people the Travelpro Platinum Elite Carry-On Spinner offers the best balance of features, durability, and price for most flyers who log less than 25,000 miles annually.

It features smooth-rolling, user-replaceable wheels; solid and comfortable, telescoping handles; and a hard-wearing nylon exterior propped up by a solid internal chassis.

The Elite only improves on past iterations in the Platinum line by reducing the size of the stowed handle (which used to jut out about an inch) and adding a second zippered, exterior pocket for easy access on the go and a USB pass-through extension that lets you insert your own battery pack for charging your phone. And at 7.8 pounds when empty, this carry-on bag is about half a pound lighter than its predecessor.

Compared with other bags in this price range, you also get surprisingly high-end components and a warranty that covers anything, even airline damage, for the life of the bag (as long as you register the suitcase within 120 days of purchase, which is easy to do on any smartphone).

Upgrade pick

If you fly more than 25,000 miles a year, invest in a bag with unique features, superior details, and plenty of expandable room. This manufacturer guarantees your satisfaction.

If you fly more than 25,000 miles annually and you’re willing to invest in a higher-quality product, we recommend the Briggs & Riley Baseline Essential 22-Inch Carry-On Expandable Spinner.

It can fit more clothing than any bag we tested, thanks to a cavernous interior and clever expansion and compression system that can adjust to variable levels beyond open and shut.

Over a five-year period before the pandemic, Wirecutter’s founder, Brian Lam, put more than 150,000 miles on his. His only complaint was that longer pants will need an extra fold, or to be rolled. In taller bags, pants will only need to be folded over once.

Carry-on backpack

Top pick

The Allpa’s clamshell design makes organizing your things simple. The strap design lets you easily wear this durable bag on your back or carry it in your hand while you’re on the move.

This bag was built with photographers in mind, but most travelers will appreciate its easy accessibility and clever tuck-away straps, and the elegant way the bag expands and contracts depending on how much you’ve packed. The accessory cubes cost extra, though.

We spent six months testing 22 bags, and in the end we chose two as our top picks for travelers determined to never check luggage again: the Cotopaxi Allpa 35L (for most trips) and the larger Peak Design Travel Backpack 45L. Both bags are exemplary carry-on travel backpacks that are designed for comfort, durability, and organization.

The Cotopaxi Allpa 35L features an easy-to-pack clamshell design and highly adjustable straps that make it a great all-around bag for any traveler who’s dedicated to packing light, or for a smaller person who wants less to carry. Handles on all four sides of this bag make it easy to grab no matter where you’ve stowed it, and the Allpa’s straps are contoured to comfortably fit people who have large or small chests. It’s not a specifically gendered design, but our female tester noticed the improvement right away. In August of 2024, Cotopaxi released a slightly redesigned version of the Allpa 35L, which is, if anything, even better: It now has a handle pass-through that lets you attach it to carry-on luggage, as well as a stretchy mesh water-bottle pocket

The bag is protected by a full lifetime warranty and has the build quality to back that up. Its front panel is made of a waterproof, TPU-coated 1,000-denier polyester (a strong fabric covered in a flexible plastic coating), which means you can lay it on its back in a wet field or in gravel without worrying about moisture soaking through or jagged edges ripping the fabric. The rest of the paneling is made with 1,680-denier ballistic nylon, which feels similar to a strong canvas but with a more prominent weave. After four years of testing, this single backpack (plus a personal item to store under the seat) has replaced nearly every travel bag or piece of luggage that Kit Dillon, Wirecutter’s senior staff writer who covers luggage, uses.

One caveat: The Allpa has a minimal amount of administrative organization—places to keep pens and papers, spaces to hold passports and boarding passes, and so forth—which is where the personal item comes in handy (see below).

The larger Peak Design Travel Backpack 45L is the Swiss Army knife of backpacks: adjustable, customizable, and (if you spring for the extra cubes and organizers) an almost perfect system for a photographer or gearhead on the move. Most bags’ expanding mechanisms aren’t worth the extra zipper they’re built on, and they look about as attractive as a boiled ham splitting out of its plastic packaging. Not so with the Peak Design: It looks just as good fully packed at 45 liters as it does compressed to a 30-liter daypack. You can access the bag through a back panel, which doubles as a computer and tablet pouch, as well as through a front one, if you unzip the pass-through divider. You can also get into the main compartment via two wing-like trapezoidal flaps that run along each side of the pack. In its natural shape, the Travel Backpack holds 35 liters, but an expansion zipper lets the bag swell to 45 liters.

If you want to use the bag as a daypack, you fold in the top corners and snap them down, reducing the bag’s volume to a slim 30 liters. It still feels larger than a normal daypack, but we think that’s a small compromise for the ability to use one backpack as both your travel bag and your daily explorer. The bag itself consists of 400D nylon and polyester fabrics—it feels tough, but not as tough as the Cotopaxi Allpa. As for flaws, it is expensive, especially if you commit to the entire system of packing cubes and camera cubes. The adjustable design and multiple zippers do add complexity, and complexity adds potential weaknesses, though Peak Design covers all of its bags with a lifetime warranty.

Finding the right bag is a personal choice, and no single bag will appeal to everyone. That’s why we have picks in our full review of carry-on travel bags that can double as traveling offices, and bags that are easy to carry while you’re walking long distances.

Personal item bag and underseat luggage

Top pick

This bag combines the versatility and toughness of a canvas-and-leather briefcase with the organization and capacity of a small daypack.

As the name suggests, “personal items” are very, well, personal, and no one bag will work for all travelers. Our favorites include the WaterField Air Porter Carry-On Bag, which shines as a tech organizer that still has enough room to also hold a change of clothes. And it’s still good-looking enough to carry from the plane to the office without raising an eyebrow.

Top pick

This classic carryall has luxurious touches, and it holds more than any bag of its type we tested (its capacity is on a par with that of our rollerboard pick).

If the Air Porter is too businessy (or pricey) for your taste, you may like the Monos Metro Duffel, a luxuriant shoulder bag with detailed organization and add-ons made specifically for simplifying travel. See our full guide to underseat luggage for still more options.

Checked luggage

If you need to pack more stuff than a carry-on and a personal item can hold, our first piece of advice would be to reconsider whether you need that extra outfit “just in case.” But you’ll have times when you need to travel with several pairs of shoes, formalwear, a winter coat, special equipment (like diving or camping gear), or all of the above. In these cases, there’s no way to avoid checking a bag.

Top pick

Comfortable, adjustable, and carry-on capable, the Farpoint has everything we needed for a week, or even months, of travel.

Comfortable, adjustable, and carry-on capable, the Fairview has everything we needed for a week, or even months, of travel.

If you’re going somewhere where you’ll need to walk a lot (particularly if there’s dirt or cobblestone roads), we recommend a travel backpack. We like the Farpoint 55 and the sized-for-smaller-torsos Fairview 55 because they’re comfortable and have plenty of room to store, and separate, our essentials. The front of the main pack unzips like a suitcase, so you can easily fit and access a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries. The daypack, which attaches to the front of the larger pack, has room for camera gear, daily essentials, and a small laptop (via a built-in sleeve). It’s also easy to stow. The main pack’s straps can tuck behind a zippered flap, so they won’t catch on anything if you check your luggage.

These bags are made of a heavy-duty recycled polyester that stands up even to long trips–one of our testers has traveled with a Farpoint 55 for years, across dozens of countries for months at a time, without damaging it. If something does happen, though, Osprey has a lifetime warranty.

Top pick

The bag provides a luxury feel at a reasonable price, with a capacity, warranty, and reliability that should suit most travelers. The 25-inch model should offer plenty of room for most people without going over airline weight limits.

If you don’t plan on walking around while carrying all your stuff, the Travelpro Platinum Elite Medium Check-In Spinner is our favorite piece of checked luggage for all of the same reasons we loved the carry-on size: It has excellent organizational features, it’s especially durable, and it has a better warranty than anything in its price range.

Duffel bag

Simple and versatile, the basic duffel-bag design is flexible enough to work as a just-the-necessities carry-on or as your mobile home for a month-long adventure holiday.

Top pick

This bag is the most versatile gear duffel we’ve found. It’s tough, water-resistant, and great for toting clothes and equipment in almost any travel scenario.

The Patagonia Black Hole Duffel (70 liters) is a true jack-of-all-trades: a sporty, water-resistant bag. Over the years, we’ve dragged, thrown, kicked, and carried multiple Patagonia Black Hole bags across most of the country, and they’ve never failed.

The exterior of the Black Hole is made of polyester ripstop that is laminated with a recycled thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) to protect against abrasion and has a water-resistant coating. It’s the shell, and to some extent the soul, of the bag—without the TPU coating, the duffel loses much of its basic functionality.

You can carry the Black Hole at your side using the two handles or over your shoulder using the strap, or you can wear it as a backpack with its two padded straps. The Black Hole is available in three other sizes, too: 40 liters, 55 liters, and 100 liters. Patagonia has a highly regarded replacement and repair guarantee that we’ve tested many times without complaint.

Top pick

If you plan on walking long distances and want multiple ways to carry your gear comfortably without standing out in a crowd, this bag is a great option.

The Peak Design Travel Duffel (35 liters) is perfect if you expect to walk a lot on your trips—touring cities, say, or doing some light adventuring—and you need a comfortable way to carry your stuff.

Like the Patagonia Black Hole, this Peak Design duffel is made to carry in your hand, on your back, or over your shoulder. However, you can also reconfigure the handle attachment points to turn the bag into a backpack. Many combo duffel-and-backpack designs rely on the handles’ serving double duty as backpack straps, which usually means they aren’t very good as either. Not so for the Travel Duffel.

Unlike several other backpack duffels we tested, the Travel Duffel positions its zipper against your back while you’re using it as a backpack (though you can’t feel the zipper at all). It’s a simple, seemingly obvious but rare design choice that lends more peace of mind when you’re walking down a busy street or absentmindedly taking in the sights.

The Travel Duffel features two zippered pockets on the side (with semi-hidden zippers) and two silicone-mesh pockets inside. The wings on the side of the bag fold out to extend the zipper path, which allows the duffel to open wider than most traditional designs; it’s a small feature, but one that makes your life just that much easier when you’re rummaging around. Along the outside edges of the duffel, Peak Design added a nylon frame, which helps the bag maintain its shape regardless of how full it is.

For the duffel’s exterior, Peak Design uses a 600D nylon fabric made from recycled materials with a C0 DWR water-repellent treatment. Though less durable than some DWR finishes, C0 treatments are made from non-fluorinated chemicals and considered more environmentally friendly. If this bag’s finish does wear out, it’s protected by Peak Design’s well-regarded lifetime warranty. (The bag also comes in three larger sizes: 50 liters, 65 liters, and 80 liters.)

If neither of these bags seems quite right for you, see our full guide to duffel bags for more options.

Garment bag

Most travelers probably don’t need a standalone garment bag, but sometimes you find yourself having to pack a single garment that requires special treatment. (In other words: wedding season.)

Top pick

This classic garment bag offers better construction and finer details than most we’ve tested, plus it has a lifetime warranty you can trust. It can also safely store clothes long-term. However, it’s expensive for a bag made of synthetic materials.

The Briggs & Riley Classic Garment Bag is to some extent exactly as it sounds: a well-made bag, with a built-in hanging hook and an internal loop for attaching your hangers. It holds about two suits comfortably—three at a stretch—along with shirts and a few other things. Inside are two large pockets, but they aren’t really made for shoes; they might be better for ties and undershirts. Along the back of the bag is a large pocket for extra shirts.

The Briggs & Riley garment bag is made of sturdy ballistic nylon. Not only should the bag provide some resistance against stormy weather or abrasions, but it can also be used for long-term storage.

Briggs & Riley bags do cost more than many other garment bags we tested, but along with versatility you get an outstanding lifetime warranty promising free repair with no proof of purchase necessary. The higher cost is for peace of mind.

If you’re in need of more affordable suggestions, though, check our full guide to garment bags.

Luggage tags and trackers

Top pick

Rugged silicone and a metal cable mean this tag (which comes two to a pack) may well outlive your luggage. The brightly colored case displays its owner’s name but keeps other personal information out of sight.

A good luggage tag should be durable, simple to use, and discreet. Ultimately, a tag should allow someone to get your luggage back to you quickly and easily, and it should withstand the wear and tear of being thrown onto conveyor belts time and again. After researching the top-rated and best-selling models, reading existing luggage-tag reviews, and comparing fourteen tags, we recommend the Ovener Silicone Luggage Tag for most travelers because it’s the only one we’d trust to survive being smashed by other bags, jammed into walls, and generally abused by baggage handlers. It’s the most durable tag we tested, and it comes in a wide selection of colors to help any bag stand out from the rest.

The Ovener tag’s silicone body seems nearly indestructible and is available in a rotating selection of colors (you get two tags per pack). Whereas other tags also feature metal cables, this tag has a metal grommet to keep the cable from eventually wearing through the silicone case.

Should you lose your bag, the Ovener makes it easy for a Good Samaritan to find your contact information. To fully access the info card, you have to unscrew and remove the metal strap; this lets the card slide out of the case. Most luggage tags we tested secure their info card in this way. It isn’t a difficult or time-consuming process, but it is an extra step compared with using a tag that displays all of your information openly. Still, for anyone who wants to keep their contact information out of view, the extra step may be worth it.

Top pick

AirTags leverage Apple’s huge network of devices to find a lost suitcase, and they’re impressively accurate in pinpointing an item’s precise location.

But why wait for that Good Samaritan? Bluetooth trackers let you monitor the location of whatever they’re attached to from a phone, tablet, or computer. For iPhone owners, Apple’s AirTag is an easy top pick. When the tracker is out of range of your phone, it’s designed to work in unison with other Apple devices, so there are nearly a billion devices constantly looking for lost items. No other tracker can compete with the broad scope and precision finding that an AirTag offers. And (so far) no other tracker provides a way for you to securely share your lost item’s location with third parties—such as the airline agent who is insisting that your bag is in Dallas when your phone is telling you it’s in Des Moines. (Apple also announced that it’ll be working with more than a dozen airlines around the world to integrate the location tracking into their systems.)

Packing cubes

Packing cubes could change your life. (Okay, maybe just your traveling life.) Packing cubes are basically bags to hold your clothes that you organize within your luggage. Though seemingly superfluous, they’re brilliant in action. If you imagine your suitcase as a dresser, you can think of these cubes as individual drawers: Put all your underwear and socks in one container, all your shirts in another, and your workout clothes in yet another. Then pull out only the cube you want. They make packing and repacking wonderfully simple.

Top pick

Simple and solidly constructed, these packing cubes keep your bag organized while you’re traveling.

The three-piece Eagle Creek Pack-It Reveal Cube Set keeps a week’s worth of clothes organized and moves easily from suitcase to hotel dresser.

The full-size cube is great for shirts, shorts, and insulating layers. The half-cube and quarter-cube are perfect for underwear, socks, and other thin fabrics such as stockings or sleepwear. These cubes are made of 300-denier polyester (a strong fabric) and stay upright when empty, so they’re easy to pack. The Pack-It cubes’ windows are made of the tightest mesh link we tested—better for resisting snags—and the smooth zippers close easily around all corners, even when a cube is overstuffed.

The Eagle Creek cubes have the ability to unzip fully to allow full access to their contents while sitting in a dresser drawer. That means your clean clothes stay protected against some potentially dicey motel dressers. In 2024, Eagle Creek relaunched the line with a slight redesign, and using 100% recycled fabric. This new incarnation repels water better (in areas besides the mesh paneling), feels even sturdier than the previous version, and still carries a lifetime warranty. The price also increased, however.

Best for…

These three cubes have the same shape as the Pack-It Reveal cubes, but they are somewhat water-resistant (to guard against spills) and weigh half as much, thanks to their lighter material.

Most travelers are likely to be well served by the Reveal set. But if you value lightness above all, the more expensive Eagle Creek Pack-It Isolate Cube Set is about 50% lighter than similar-size competitors. (The largest Isolate cube weighs 1.3 ounces; the same-size Eagle Creek Pack-It Reveal cube weighs just over 3 ounces.)

The updated-in-2024 Pack-It Isolate cube is made out of a semitranslucent, 100% recycled, 70-denier ripstop nylon. Previous iterations of this cube were made out of a thinner (50-denier) ripstop polyester, so we have less experience testing this new fabric, but so far it’s proven as durable and water-resistant as the cubes we tested for over five years with no issues. In fact, it’s now even stronger, though it weighs just as little. (The Isolate cubes carry the same lifetime warranty as the Reveal cubes.)

However, the Isolate design’s thin sides—which don’t allow the cubes to stand up on their own—make those cubes a bit more challenging to pack than the Reveal cubes.

Compression sacks

Originally designed for reducing the bulk of lofty sleeping bags, compression sacks are stuff sacks modified with additional nylon end caps that can be pulled together by strings or straps to remove air and create a smaller, denser package that’s easier to pack. Most travelers use compression sacks to condense socks, underwear, and other stuff you don’t mind getting wrinkled into a package with half as much overall volume. For example, an 8- to 12-liter sack can compress a fleece jacket and a long-weekend’s worth of socks and underwear into something that fits in one hand. They also make a decent pillow in a pinch.

Top pick

It has a full-length zipper on its side that allows access to the bag’s entire contents. However, it doesn’t compress as tightly as traditional designs.

Most compression sacks require you to empty out the stuff at the top to get to the stuff below it, but the side-zipper design on the Osprey StraightJacket allows access to the entire contents of the bag at once. The compression straps attach sideways, and are less likely to get tangled and twisted like on most compression sacks with lengthwise straps. It can also sit up on its own, and the handle design lets you break it out as a last minute carry-on to avoid an overweight-baggage fee. However, it doesn’t compress down as compactly as the traditional designs we tested so it’s not the best option if compression is your top priority.

GobiGear’s SegSac takes a different approach to solving the same access issue: It has four inner dividers that run the length of the sack in order to keep your socks separate from your underwear, winter accessories, towel, what have you. This means you don’t have to take out your T-shirts to get to your socks. Unlike the Osprey, it compresses just as much as a normal compression sack, but it loses points for versatility because the segmentation prevents it from handling large items like a down jacket or sleeping bag.

One Wirecutter colleague, writer Alexander Aciman, swears by plastic compression bags. They probably won’t last as long as the Osprey StraightJacket, but he has reused his—a 12-pack he found on Amazon—multiple times over the course of two years. Alex describes the bags as, essentially, large Ziploc-style bags with a one-way valve at the bottom. “After a few trips, I’ve learned that these bags work best when I haven’t egregiously overstuffed them,” he says. “For example, you can save more space in your suitcase by splitting up 10 T-shirts into two bags with five shirts each rather than putting all 10 into one bag. Overstuffing can make it hard to get all the air out, which defeats the purpose.”

Luggage scale

Using compression bags of any kind does leave you prone to one pitfall: stuffing your suitcase or backpack so full that you incur an overweight-baggage fee. Before you leave home, you can just use a bathroom scale to confirm that your bag isn’t too heavy. But if you tend to shop while traveling, you might want to consider bringing a small luggage scale.

Top pick

This luggage scale performed the best in our tests. It’s easy to hold and intuitive to use, and its margin of error was under a pound.

We tested six well-rated or often-recommended contenders head-to-head and found that the Travel Inspira Luggage Scale stood out. It had the smallest margin of error and was frequently as accurate as using a bathroom scale.

The Travel Inspira scale is also notably easy to use. Two buttons on the scale’s handle make the controls convenient to access: One turns on and tares the scale, while the other allows you to switch between pounds and kilograms.

The weight is clearly displayed on a backlit digital screen, and the device logs and locks in your number, so even after you put it down, you can still read the weight. The wide handle of the Travel Inspira scale makes it possible to lift with both hands, but you can also lift it with one hand.

The Travel Inspira scale’s biggest downside is that it’s powered by a non-rechargeable lithium battery. Because of rare instances in which lithium batteries explode, the TSA does not allow most lithium batteries in checked baggage, so you must pack this scale in your carry-on. But the manual and rechargeable models we tested weren’t nearly as accurate as the Travel Inspira scale.