Lots O' Luggage

With all my extensive traveling, I've put a lot of wear and tear on my luggage. It is TravelPro, so I thought it would last longer than it has. It could also be that it hasn't lasted because it bought it from a secondary supplier I think, and this may have been more of a "quality assurance issue." Regardless, I'm now on the hunt for something to replace my existing carry on. A lot of luggage that I'm seeing these days is "smart" with on-board battery charger, GPS tracking, etc. Quite a few models are popping up on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and I've been a little curious about them.

My initial thoughts are always that the features being sold are not practical for actual travel and my experiences have really shown me that these "smart bags" really are not a smart purchase. As an example, I saw this series of bags today:



And on the surface, they look "cool," "neat," "perfect for the traveler," but the number of reservations I had far exceeded my desire to make a purchase. But I thought that perhaps the issue is that I'm being biased, or stingy, and I wanted to gather more information. So a brief search of reviews and the like, found a video that addresses the exact concerns I was having:


My hope is that this post serves as something to think about should you ever need to shop for luggage, and you consider getting a "smart bag" of some sort. But please note, I'm sure there are smart bags out there that are practical and useful, so always do your research and if you have any suggestions for I might like, please let me know in the comments.