Those Trendy 4-wheel Spinner Suitcases Are Terrible on Uneven Surfaces

The two travelers were sitting on a bench, looking dejected and tired, the very large suitcase the woman was carrying missing one of its four wheels, the man looking sweaty like he had been carrying it for a while on the cobblestone sidewalks. They were learning the hard way what so many other travelers have discovered: those 4-wheel spinner suitcases aren’t meant for uneven surfaces. 

 

I don’t know if that couple ever made it to their hotel okay without giving up and calling an Uber, but I’ve also seen many people like this while living in my adopted city in the interior of Mexico. Sometimes every week.

Very few of the sidewalks here or in any other Spanish colonial city are the smooth cement type you see in younger cities. More often they’re made of flagstones, cobblestones, or pavers. Then you are for sure going to encounter some stairs in Guanajuato where I am, so you’d better be able to lift and carry what you brought too. 

Spinner Suitcases are Meant for One-place Vacations

I wrote once a rant about how you don’t go backpacking with a wheelie suitcase and I still believe strongly that you should ditch the wheels altogether for long-term traveling unless you’re getting too old for it. But if you’re going to vacation with a suitcase and you’ll be moving around a lot, at least make it one with two large wheels like inline skates have, not flimsy little plastic ones that even carpet will trip up.

Those 4-wheel spinner suitcases glide along smoothly in airports and hotels, so if all you’ll be doing is taking taxis and staying in hotels or on cruise ships, you’re probably fine. Anything more complicated than that, however, including walking a few blocks with your suitcase in a historic city, and you will be quite frustrated. You might need to buy a replacement mid-trip. 

I’m not saying this as a person who have never used one of these spinner suitcases. If I know the trip will just be house-taxi-airport-taxi-destination and that’s it, I’ll use one. I reviewed this Ricardo Malibu Bay one on YouTube and I’ve traveled with ones from Level8 and Bric’s when I worked with them on marketing partnerships. All three are well-made and though I don’t like the whole clamshell design on the latter two because that makes it hard to use conventional luggage stands in a hotel, otherwise no complaints when used as they are intended to be used. 

I know these pretty spinner suitcases are popular. Fashion-focused editors at magazines and websites love these suitcases because they look nice in photos and videos, with more interesting designs in metal and plastic that aren’t as easy to pull off in a more practical piece of luggage. They’re also much cheaper to crank out in a Chinese factory than ones that require sewing and reinforcement of pressure points, so the companies can flood Walmart and TJ Maxx with them at low price points to dupe people who don’t know any better. 

The problem comes when you try to use a 4-wheel suitcase any place where things get rough and bumpy. Think of these spinners as the equivalent of a well-dressed woman in high heels. She’s probably going to be fine in a hotel, restaurant, or office building hallway. Put her on the streets of a historic city, however, and she’ll be holding onto someone else’s arm for dear life so she doesn’t break a heel and go tumbling down. 

If you don’t believe me that suitcases with four small wheels are a bad idea on uneven surfaces, just sit on a bench in a place like Barcelona or San Miguel de Allende and watch the tourists move around with their luggage. In 9 cases out of 10, they’ll only be using two of the wheels since it’s hopeless with four, but still struggling because those wheels are too tiny and fragile. 

Sidewalk Sagas in International Locations

I’ve been talking about historic cities that were built for people and horses rather than cars, but you also run into cultural differences too. This is especially true in Southeast Asia, where sidewalks are places meant for parking your motorbike, eating some street food, and displaying your store’s wares, not walking with a wheelie suitcase from the metro to your hotel or Airbnb. 

I said that Phnom Penh is a great city for wandering around, but I didn’t say it was easy. The streets are a continual obstacle course, with only a few metres at a time of usable sidewalks.

That is a quote from a newsletter penned by James Clark, a travel blogger who has a site called Future Southeast Asia. He lives in Vietnam, which is also a disaster when it comes to sidewalks:

When I was last in Vietnam with my family, we did find one area of Hanoi where you would be able to at least move freely with a suitcase that had two robust rubber wheels. That was the area built by the French when they governed Indochina, with sidewalks so wide that the vendors and shopkeepers can’t fill all the space. I was glad we had backpacks though because the rest of the time we would have been carrying our suitcases around the obstacles, up stairs—most cheap hotels don’t have an elevator—and down dirt paths strewn with rocks and construction debris. 

It’s important to remember that there’s no equivalent to the American Disabilities Act in most countries, especially developing nations. If it’s tough for people in a wheelchair, it’s also tough for those lugging a heavy wheeled suitcase too. (Or pushing a stroller, which is also a bad idea in many cities.) The poorer the country, the worse shape the sidewalks are liable to be in, so you can’t ever assume that your 4-wheeled spinner suitcase will be fine once you step outside of a 4-star hotel. 

The fewer tourists a city gets, the more likely the sidewalks will not be smooth or have ramps. The locals are only wheeling things if it’s a grocery cart or a hand truck for deliveries and both of those are going to have heavy-duty wheels that can handle the bumps. 

Then when you travel in Africa, you may not find sidewalks at all. In smaller villages especially, everyone just walks in the dirt road, carrying what they’re transporting on their bodies or on their heads. This is also true in some Caribbean islands once you get away from the cruise ship port. 

Luggage Tips for Sensible Travelers

You can ignore this whole article if the most daunting trek you’ll face on your next vacation is boarding a cruise ship or getting to an all-inclusive resort. Pack away and be impractical because you’ll have smooth surfaces and you can tip your way out of any problems otherwise by paying bellhops or porters. You also don’t have to worry much if you’re on a group tour where there’s someone else taking care of the baggage transfers.

If you’re an independent traveler being more adventurous, however, and you can’t/don’t want to carry a backpack, you need the right kind of suitcase at least. Here’s a bit of advice from someone who has been traveling regularly since the early 1990s. 

Splurge a little for a lifetime guarantee.

There are two luggage brands I recommend a lot because I use one of them on nearly every trip: Osprey and Eagle Creek. Their bags are guaranteed for life, something I’ve had to test them on occasionally, and they are built to last you a decade or two of frequent travel. If you only take a couple of vacations a year, they’ll probably last longer than you do. 

Briggs & Riley suitcases are more popular with business travelers, but they are also guaranteed for life. TravelPro has long been the airline workers’ favorite, though their guarantee is a mixed bag depending on which product you purchase. Some are guaranteed for life, some are not. 

You want a 2-wheel suitcase with Rollerblade-style wheels.

Like I said, I’ve used several of the 4-wheel spinner suitcase versions and they’re fine for trips where you’ll always be using them on smooth surfaces. Go ahead and opt for form over function if it’s a quick beach getaway or a city break with one hotel. 

When that’s not a given though, you want something more robust. My wife and I spent four months in Europe in 2023 and two months there this past year, bumping over rough sidewalks in ten different countries combined. The Osprey (pictured above) and Eagle Creek 2-wheel bags held up like champs both trips, still in great shape after all the Barcelona tiles and the old streets of Prague.

I did have to carry those suitcases up and down a lot of steps though in those European cities. Which brings us to…

Overpacking will come back to haunt you. 

If you’re just going on a vacation where you’re going to one place and will unpack at a nice hotel or in a ship cabin, it’s not the end of the world if you pack too much—as long as you don’t have to pay the airline extra because your bag is too heavy. (You’re usually limited to 50 pounds tops, sometimes 35 or 40. Buy a $10 luggage scale.)

The problem comes in when you’re moving around different locations and need to walk or use public transportation. I didn’t really need to hit the gym during our two-month trip in Europe last year to give my upper body a workout because I was frequently carrying both our suitcases up and down steps. Only some of the train stations had elevators or escalators, only some of the metro stations did, and most of the apartments and city center hotels we stayed in didn’t have an elevator. 

Or sometimes the stations have an elevator, but it’s at the far end of the platform and you have to work your way through a crowd that’s all heading for the stairs, going against the flow. It can take twice as long to go down one level and sometimes you’re rushing to make a connection. 

If your suitcase weighs 50 pounds, you’d better be strong enough to haul it up several flights of steps regularly. Or have someone with you who is willing to do it for you. And it had better have at least one good handle, but preferably one on the top and on the side so you can carry it two ways.

A smarter move would be to anticipate this and not cram in so much. Nobody is going to notice you’ve been wearing the same shoes all week. Or  that you only have four outfits. Do some laundry now and then. 

Need some ideas? See 7 tips for packing lighter that I wrote earlier.