Travelpro Platinum Elite 29" Review

The Platinum Elite is a very large bag. Though we appreciate its capacity and excellent storage features, we find it hard to take advantage of all that volume and still hit airplane weight requirements.

Performance Comparison

Storage & Organization

This bag has an expandable zipper around the bottom of the front pocket, but we can't imagine that you'll need it. It's already ginormous. In our capacity test, this suitcase ate our lead tester's entire wardrobe with ease. With a claimed 143.5 liters of volume, you can pack pretty much anything you can think of on your next vacation.

The Platinum Elite does a pretty good job of helping you stay organized along the way as well. A folding compartment for hanging clothes like dresses or blazers minimizes wrinkling and tucks away on the backside of the main flap. The rest of the compartment is wide open. The runners for the telescoping handle make packing with packing cubes a little less efficient, though.

Two mesh garment panels let you compress some or all of what you pack in the main compartment. They double as mesh bags for toiletries or small items like socks or gloves. A zip-out, plastic pocket on the right-hand side of the main compartment provides a safe place to store any liquid toiletries. Another pocket on the left helps subdivide your smaller items further.

All told, the Platinum Elite provides a nice amount of storage, and that's just on the inside. Two large external pockets complete the package. They're nice for stashing a few extra layers, a magazine, and maybe your wallet. But they are also large, running the full length of the suitcase, so they won't keep smaller items very organized or within easy reach.

Ease of Transport

Despite a nice set of wheels, an adjustable telescoping handle, and three other grab-and-toss handles, we still don't love lugging this suitcase around. It's just too big to use casually. However, we appreciate many of the organizational features, and smaller versions are available if you don't require quite so much space. If you do need this much suitcase, you'll be happy enough with how readily it rolls. The wheels aren't our favorite, and the whole package is less responsive than smaller, sleeker models, but it works, even in gravel.

We also like the grab-handle on top of the suitcase and the one on the side. The one on the bottom is less pleasant. It has a rigid plastic facing that you can only grab from one direction. It works, but it's just not that comfortable to grab.

Reliability

After just a few months of testing, the front zipper pocket on our model began catching on stray strings. It's not the most significant part of the bag, but this doesn't bode well. The other zippers are a different style and seem to work better. However, the two main zippers are not that comfortable to use. Like every bag we tested with an integrated, TSA-approved lock, they have a large square of metal at one end for the locking mechanism to grab. We appreciate the lock but wish it didn't require such deformed zipper pulls.

A small scrape guard on the bottom railing protects the fabric from slamming into steps and curbs. There are also four platform guards on the left-hand side. These details should help the fabric last longer. Other than that front zipper, we don't have any pressing reliability concerns. The main fabric sheds splashes of water quite well, but they do soak right through the zipper.

Weight

This suitcase weighs just over 12 pounds, which we consider heavy. Given its massive capacity, though, the bag gives you a very reasonable weight-to-volume ratio. Of course, once you pack it full of all the stuff it is capable of carting around, you've got one heavy bag on your hands. The wheels deal with the load quite well, and the handles help. Still, it's big and hard to toss around and you will need to be careful not to overshoot the weight limit for your airline.

Style

The Platinum Elite looks nice, but it trends a little closer to dated than classic. The saturated color options are appealing, and the fabric looks like it's of reasonable quality — it's interesting enough to pull you in but not to impress.

Value

The Platinum Elite offers what we think is a good value. It gives you a lot of the same great organizational features of a much more expensive option, but for a much lower price. That said, it also seems less durable and is definitely more cumbersome. We also think its large size limits its usefulness. How often are you going to take a trip where you need that much luggage?

Conclusion

This big bag is well-done and helps you make heads and tails of your wardrobe, but it will take chronic over packers beyond the brink of any reasonable weight limit. Still, if you need to take everything with you on your next vacation, consider the Travelpro Platinum Elite.