Away Topside Carry-On Review

Usually, when you’re debating between softside and hardside luggage, you have to make some design choices right away. Soft bags typically have external pockets, while hard ones don’t, and hardside luggage usually opens clamshell, with fairly equal capacity on both sides, while fabric suitcases are more likely to open with a lid.

The Away Topside Carry-On upends those expectations, with a polycarbonate shell that opens with a lid and includes a laptop sleeve. As the name suggests, it opens from the top, or rather, the front, instead of around the middle. That means you don’t have to find double the space in your hotel room to unpack, or at the gate to grab your sweater. Is it the best of both worlds? We took it on a 4-day trip to Florida to find out.

External Components

Hardside luggage is typically made with some type of plastic material. The Away Topside Carry-On is no different, with a thick, durable polycarbonate that seems to have less give than some other pieces we’ve tested that use thinner materials. While polycarbonate can be prone to scuffs and scratches, Away includes an eraser to help clean it up.

In our experience, the carry-on luggage still looks largely as it did when we unboxed it, with hardly any marks to show for its trips on Delta Air Lines and in the backs of personal vehicles and Ubers. The polycarbonate has a texture and a horizontal design that helps to conceal any marks.

There is a small portion of Away branding on the front, but it’s fairly subtle, even in black on our Olive Green colorway. We’re digging the green, but at the time of this review, it’s also available in Coast Blue, Blush Pink, and Jet Black.

There are carry handles on the top and right side of the bag, which slightly extend when you pull them. They’re comfortable to hold when you need to pull the bag out of the trunk or overhead bin or carry it up stairs. When you’re lifting it off a raised surface, like a dresser or table, there’s also a recessed handle at the bottom of the bag to help you keep it level as you move it. It’s exactly where you would expect a handle to be, so even though it doesn’t protrude from the bottom of the bag, your hands naturally find it when you go to move the carry-on.

Since this is spinner luggage, the Away Topside Carry-On also has a telescoping handle that you can hold as you roll it along. The handle itself is soft, with a button on top that you push to extend or retract it. It stops at two height adjustments, which should fit most users, and while it has some play, it’s not very wiggly, especially when the bag is full. The handle is easy to retract, falling easily back to the bag when you press the button and push it down.

Away includes a leather luggage tag with the Topside Carry-On. It has a card inside that you can fill out with your contact information, and you can connect it to either handle to help someone contact you if you accidentally leave it behind. It’s a bit stiff to attach and detach, but we don’t worry about it coming off in transit, as we’ve had with flimsier plastic tags. Away includes a smart tracker pocket in the main compartment, too, if you’re more inclined to use digital trackers instead of analog ones, but it’s nice to have the option.

The Away Topside Carry-On has YKK zippers, with dual zipper heads for the main entry and a single head for the expansion zipper. The main compartment zippers click into a TSA-approved combination lock at the top of the bag, and that functions properly. Our only issue with the zipper is that the lid sometimes compresses the zipper track, especially around the corners. We had issues getting the zipper around the bottom and top of the bag, though it slides easily on the side. It seems to stick because the polycarbonate presses into the fabric on either side of the zipper teeth, stopping the pull, not because it catches on anything.

Away uses “WhisperGlide™ 360° Wheels,” and they are very quiet as you move along. There are four sets of two wheels that spin easily in all directions, letting you turn on a dime. They also lock with a slide under the telescoping handle, keeping them in place if you stop on an incline or just happen to bump the bag while it’s standing on a smooth surface, like the extra slippery floor of an airport. It’s nice to have, as long as you remember it’s there and to engage it before you need it.

The wheels work well over most surfaces, rolling beside you on tile, terrazzo, cement, and thin carpeting. Rougher surfaces or thicker carpeting require you to pull it behind you instead of rolling it beside you, especially if you have a backpack on top of it, with more weight pressing into the wheels. We never encountered a time when it wouldn’t roll or was overly hard to pull, but it seemed to require pulling more often than some other roller bags.

The dimensions are very close to the carry-on capacity of more permissive airlines, like Delta, and we had no issue fitting it into the overhead bin, despite it being about a half inch too wide and deep. Delta isn’t the type of airline to stick every bag into the sizer, though, so you might want to pay more attention and be prepared to check it if you’re flying someone more strict.

Fit Notes

We really like the look of the Away Topside Carry-On. It appears as premium as the price point would have you think, and luckily, your experience rolling it through the airport and to the hotel should feel just as good. It rolls very well on most surfaces. We only felt it slowing down in the hotel hallway, where the carpet was thickly padded and fairly plush. Once we gave up on rolling and pulled it instead, it was fine. Turning corners is no issue, especially on tile or other smooth surfaces. If anything, sometimes it felt like the suitcase was getting ahead of us as it rolled so quickly.

Our primary tester is 5 feet 5 inches tall with a 17-inch torso, and she found both handle heights comfortable. She primarily used the tallest adjustment with a daypack slid over the handle, but when she wasn’t rolling with a second bag, the lower level was the right height.

Since it’s a 4-wheeled spinner, it stands nicely on its own, another perk over 2-wheeled rollaboards or softside bags with front pockets that can make the bag tip when overloaded. If you need a seat or a footrest, just be sure to lock the wheels first so it doesn’t roll out from under you.

Inside The Carry On Luggage

It sometimes feels like every piece of luggage has the same interior design, but the Away Topside Carry-On has a few tricks up its sleeve.

We’ll start with the lid, which has three zippered mesh pockets. The two closest to the hinge are smaller and just a hair wider than square. We used one for a travel jewelry case and the other for a few snacks. They’re not very large, but you could also use them for your laptop cord and wall charger if you didn’t want to bring a separate tech pouch.

Your computer goes in the third zippered pocket, which opens around the top. While it looks like this pocket occupies the other half of the lid that the first two pockets weren’t using, it actually covers the entire space. Away says it accommodates a 16-inch laptop, but we couldn’t fit our 16-inch MacBook Pro in the sleeve, so we think it’s best for 13-15-inch devices. There’s decent padding on the back to protect your laptop from exterior impacts, but nothing really protects it from gear inside. Most likely, it’s just going to bump up against the compression panel, clothing, or packing cubes, though, so that shouldn’t be much of an issue. It wasn’t for us.

The only thing to note is that when you set the bag on a table or desk at the hotel and open the lid with your laptop inside, even if you prop it up against the wall, the weight of the lid with a computer in the sleeve is such that it pushes your bag forward and slams the lid to the table or desk. This is how we know the padding works so well; nothing happened to our laptop the few times this occurred. However, Away has a solution for this: drawbridge straps. You connect them to the loops on the lid, and it keeps the lid upright no matter what’s inside. We wish they were adjustable (they’re not), but they get the job done.

On the bottom of the hinge, resting inside the main compartment, is a small zippered pouch. Inside is the laundry bag that Away includes with the Topside Carry-On. If you pull the bag out, you can use the pouch for small accessories. Inside the pouch, you’ll also find a hidden pocket for a smart tracker. We actually used the laundry bag as a shoe pouch instead, and it works well for that purpose.

There is also a compression panel held in place with two buckled straps. You can remove it and just use the straps if you don’t like it, but it has a few zippered pockets on it to help organize your gear. The top has two—one mesh and one with an extra layer of water-resistant material for damp or dirty items—and on the bottom is a third that covers the entire panel. While the pockets are shallow, they can hold a few items of clothing or even a bit of dirty laundry if you use the laundry bag for shoes as we did.

The main compartment packs much more like a softside suitcase or a duffle bag, with all of the capacity on the bottom. Now, you’re probably used to packing around the channels where the handle retracts, but on the Away Topside Carry-On, you lose a little more space due to the wheel brakes. The mechanism occupies a portion of the space between the two channels. There’s a silver lining: it creates a flatter packing surface at the top of the bag, but you do give up a tiny bit of packing capacity.

So, what did I fit inside? Well, packing for a 4-day trip that included various activities, I actually started with two pairs of shoes: sneakers and flats. I put them in the laundry bag and shoved them into the space at the bottom, next to the wheels. That section has a bit of a lid, and it held my athletic shoes in place.

There was a bit of unused space under my shoes next to the handle channels. I shoved socks, underwear, and bathing suits there. I didn’t bother with packing cubes for this trip, as I didn’t really find it necessary in the carry-on. It was a shorter trip, so I wasn’t trying to save much space, and the compression panel and straps kept everything from shifting around as I traveled.

Instead, I stacked the rest of my clothing, some extra books, and my toiletry bag, then covered everything with the compression panel and tightened the straps. I had plenty of space for two pairs of shorts, a dress, two tops, a wrap, two swimsuits, and a cover-up, which is all I needed for my stay at a Florida resort. If you need to bring more, you can get 2 inches of extra space with the expansion zipper. Just beware that taking advantage of that space will likely throw you out of compliance with your airline, and they may or may not ask to gate-check your bag, depending on how strict they are.

So, if you’re looking for a carry-on that’s good for at least five days (and maybe more with compression cubes and savvy packing) and that we think will last for years of trips, the Away Topside Carry-On could be right for you.