Best rolling luggage

Top-rated, mid-priced brand: Eagle Creek

Reviewers pick Eagle Creek luggage more than any other brand. The Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 (*Est. $285) is a particularly great wheeled carry-on pick, reviewers say. It's lightweight, sturdily built and carries an unconditional lifetime warranty that even covers airline damage.

A bigger version, the Eagle Creek Tarmac 25 (*Est. $240), wins a head-to-head durability test against four other lightweight suitcases at CNNMoney.com, which reports that its nylon shell "never ripped or even scuffed."

The Tarmac 22 carry-on also packs a plethora of clever compartments, including a hidden cash pouch and a built-in zippered shoe box, although there's no garment hanger. A tester at Wired is impressed by this bag's "knobby" tires, which handle concrete, carpet or dirt with ease. One potential problem: even when it's not expanded, the Tarmac 22 measures half-an-inch deeper than the normal airline size limit for carry-ons. A couple of users at Amazon.com report having trouble fitting the bag into overhead bins. A 20-inch Eagle Creek Tarmac (*Est. $250) carry-on is also available. A bag from another Eagle Creek line, the Eagle Creek Hovercraft 25 (*Est. $170), proves very light, capacious and easy to maneuver in Good Housekeeping tests.

The ultimate frequent travelers -- pilots and flight attendants -- often say they use Travelpro, the original wheeled luggage invented by a Northwest Airlines pilot in 1987. We found good user reviewers for the Travelpro Crew7 22-inch Expandable Rollaboard Suiter (now discontinued) at Amazon.com and LuggageOnline.com. (An even older model, the Crew6, is named the runner-up wheeled bag in a segment on CBS's "The Early Show.") Users say the Crew7 is roomy and lightweight, with great wheels. However, the revamped Crew8 22-inch Suiter (*Est. $135) has not yet accumulated enough reviews to evaluate its quality, although a handful of reviewers give it positive ratings at Amazon.com and eBags.com. The Travelpro Walkabout Lite 2 25-inch Suiter -- now the Travelpro Walkabout Lite 3 26-inch Expandable Rollaboard Suiter (*Est. $120) -- performs well in a Good Housekeeping test, though editors note it is a bit heavy.

The sporty Osprey Meridian 22 (*Est. $300) won Outside magazine's Gear of the Year award in 2006, proving itself "impervious to 3,000 hard-knock miles by plane, train, rickshaw, boat, and one cranky camel" on the reviewer's five-week India trip. You can wheel this carry-on, pick it up like a suitcase or wear the whole thing like a backpack -- and the entire front is a zip-off daypack. We found only a few user reviews for this pack, however. Osprey's "All Mighty Guarantee" offers free lifetime repair of any defect or damage, for any reason.

The REI Stratocruiser 25 (*Est. $250), the Outside magazine Gear of the Year winner for 2007, is too large to carry on. Reviewer Ted Stedman of Outside magazine praises it as a "chameleon" -- stylish enough for business travel yet tough enough to survive "18,000 air miles and a half-dozen rattling safari drives in South Africa" with no damage whatsoever. It has a large main compartment, two zippered panel sleeves and a detachable daypack with several pockets of its own. The Stratocruiser 25 comes in second out of five wheeled bags tested by Budget Travel magazine; only the 25-inch Eagle Creek Velocity (now discontinued) performs better. Like the Osprey, this bag can switch from wheeled to backpack mode, and the editors at Budget Travel magazine find it surprisingly comfortable as a backpack. User reviews at REI.com are positive as well, saying the Stratocruiser 25 is spacious, well organized, a cinch to carry and easy to pick out in a crowd.

Luxury bags may not live up to their price tags

In one professional comparison test, which involves tossing baggage around in a mechanical tumbler, a few upscale brands prove to be the most rugged: Briggs & Riley, Hartmann and Tumi. Owners, however, give these upscale brands mixed reviews. In the forums at FlyerTalk.com, frequent travelers praise Briggs & Riley bags in general, but Tumi seems to get at least as many negative comments as positive ones. No single piece of luggage made by these high-end brands earned as many favorable reviews as the top-rated (and less expensive) Eagle Creek Tarmac 22, despite their stellar performance in professional tests.

Among luxury bags, we found the best reviews for the Alpha Frequent Traveler 22-inch Framed Expandable Carry-on (*Est. $595). This carry-on easily outclasses all others in one rigorous comparison test by a leading consumer magazine. It's durable androomy -- the maximum possible carry-on size -- but a couple of users at Amazon.com and eBags.com say it's too long to fit lengthwise into some overhead bins. The Tumi Alpha series offers a full line of ballistic-nylon pieces withthoughtful, convenient features that experts love. Travel Channel host Samantha Brown picks the Tumi Alpha 28-inch Travel & Business Wheeled Expandable (*Est. $950) as her personal favorite in a head-to-head test at SmartMoney magazine, where it "survives a tumble down the stairs without any scratches, dents or smudges."

Owners rate Tumi one of the best luggage brands at LuggageOnline.com, but we did see a few complaints from users about its customer service. Two users say the manufacturer either refused to honor its warranty or was "snotty" about having to provide repairs -- hardly the kind of treatment a customer would expect after paying close to $600 for a suitcase. Even though most reviewers say Tumi Alpha bag is durable, it has a short warranty for its price: one year of unlimited damage coverage (including airline wounds) and five years of defect coverage.

Briggs & Riley offers the best warranty -- lifetime free damage repair for any reason on all of its products -- and two of their bags are standouts in professional tests. The Briggs & Riley Transcend 24-inch Upright proves most durable in Good Housekeeping's tests and while, it's been discontinued, Transcend luggage is still available in other sizes. The Briggs & Riley Baseline 20-inch Upright (Discontinued) is one of five carry-ons recommended by a leading consumer-review publication, but we could not find any user reviews for this luggage.