Independent buying guides
For travelers who get caught by cabin size rules and want the dimensions settled first. Every guide answers one buying question, works out the weight you can pack, and cites each allowance with its check date.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Cabin case or hold case, hard shell or soft side: the four numbers that decide which suitcase to buy first, and why tare weight beats the price tag.
Photo: Sachi Gahan · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Divide the price by trips rather than years, add repairs, bag fees and customs duty, and the cheap case is often the expensive one. Full arithmetic shown.
Photo: Bryan Ledgard · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Packing and load
Weigh the empty case first, then build a weight budget item by item. The arithmetic that keeps a cabin bag under the cap and the hold bag under 50 lb.
Photo: Angelina Litvin linalitvina · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Adds up a kit list against a weight target and a body-weight guideline.
total = base weight + consumables (water litres x 1 kg + food days x food per day); share of body weight = total / body weight x 100
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Turns a price into a cost per use, so a dear item used often can be compared with a cheap one used rarely.
cost per use = (price + consumables over the whole life) / (uses per week x 52 x years)
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
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Photo: Familydestinationsguide.com Images · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Weight, volume and what gets left behind.
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Photo: Bryan Ledgard · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Temperature, weather and terrain, with real numbers.
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Photo: Sachi Gahan · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: Familydestinationsguide.com Images · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Intervals, parts and what they cost.
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Photo: Mstephen247 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
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Photo: Sandrine Z · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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