Ricardo Hard-Sided Suitcase Review: A Revolution In Luggage

Ricardo
The roll-aboard hard sided suitcase from Ricardo Beverly Hills Luggage, among its very clever features, includes a built-in TSA accessible lock (photo: Scotty Reiss for AGirlsGuidetoCars)

I never thought I could make the change to a hard-sided case. Now I can’t image going back to a soft-sided suitcase.

I love my suitcase. Next to my car, it’s my best friend: it’s allowed me to make multi-city business trips, accommodated multi-outfit plans for romantic weekends, and to pack full-family changes of clothes and pile car seats and duffle bags on top when I traveled with my kids—100k miles in one year!— coast to coast. My suitcase might be the hardest working member of my family.

Time to try something new: No more tilting and towing; this case just rolls along beside me 

So it’s with great trepidation that I allow another suitcase to take its place. But Ricardo Beverly Hills wanted to take the challenge. And of course, I’m up for it.

Ricardo recently sponsored an event I attended, a retreat at Walt Disney World. So, I with thoughts of Space Mountain and the Chevy Test Track in mind, I started to make the transition from packing my soft-sided baby blue Longchamp 20” wheeled suitcase to packing in the hard-sided, double-pocketed Ricardo Elite Roxbury bag.

Heading to #TMOMDisney and this will make it MUCH easier! Thanks #Ricardo!

A video posted by @scottyreiss on

Packing my new luggage was easy enough; I managed to get all my stuff in with no problem, and then I was off for a new experience: it was time to test out the learning curve of a new bag (and as you know, that alone can be a tough road).

It’s nice to be modern: changes that make the trip easier

Here’s what I noticed about the Ricardo bag that is different from your typical roll-aboard bag:

  • Rolling rocks. Not having to tilt your bag and drag it along behind you is a great thing.  Ricardo’s four wheels make the bag very maneuverable and easy to manage.
  • Things stack much easier on top of the rolling bag. I could pile on a shopping bag, my handbag and more and as long as I had balance, it worked.
  • Rest rooms are a breeze: the fact that the bag rolls into a toilet stall, rather than rolling in behind you, makes it easier to get your bag into a tiny stall without it hugging that oh-so-germy-toilet. Germophobes, rejoice.
  • Hard sided yes, but lightweight, too. It was as easy to lift into the over head bin as my lightweight, cloth-sided Longchamp bag.
  • Expandability: the bag expands another inch or so, which is great if you’re checking your bag or driving; if you’re carrying it aboard a flight, don’t expand it or you’ll have to check it.
  • A bag clip on the outside lets you hang a tote or other small bag on the side of the Roxbury.
  • TSA approved lock. OK, this feature might be worth the price alone. Here’s the rub: the TSA can unlock the bag (and lock it back) with a special key even after you’ve locked it with your four-digit code. I made a video that shows how it works.

If you’ve ever had your bag pillaged and things stolen—and I have— you’ll appreciate the TSA lock for BOTH checking your bag and leaving it in your hotel room, locked and secure while you’re in the Magic Kingdom Fast-Passing your way from to one Space Mountain ride after another.

Last, there’s the price. When Ricardo first introduced these revolutionary bags—hard sided, four wheels, no tilting— they were expensive. $400 or so was typical. Then, they brought the price down to a comfortable $300 or so. Now, you can reliably find a 20″ Ricardo bag for $150. That’s a price that makes me happy.

Disclosure: Ricardo provided the Roxbury Elite suitcase for my review; opinions expressed here are all my own.

Scotty Reiss
Scotty Reiss

Journalist, entrepreneur and mom. Expertise includes new cars, family cars, 3-row SUVs, child passenger car seats and automotive careers and culture. A World Car Awards juror and member of the steering committee, Scotty likes to say the automotive business found her, rather than her finding it. But recognizing the opportunity to give voice to powerful female consumers and create a voice to match their spending power, her mission became to empower women as car buyers and owners. A career-long journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Town & Country, Adweek and co-authored the book Stew Leonard, My Story, a biography of the founder of the iconic grocery company Stew Leonard’s. Her love of cars started when her father insisted she learn to change the oil in her MG Midget, but now it mostly plays out in the many road trips taken with her family.

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