Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro Review

Carry-on luggage can be easier to pack and easier on your back than travel backpacks, but suitcases take up a lot of storage space. If you live in a small house or apartment, you might not have anywhere to fit even a 20-inch roller bag when you’re not traveling. That is, unless you get the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro. It’s much easier to find 4 inches of depth under your bed or in the back of a closet than it is 9 inches or more, making a collapsible carry-on pretty appealing.

Is it worth the effort to set up and take down? We’ve been testing the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro for a few weeks to find out.

External Components

You don’t have to choose between hardside or softside luggage with the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro. It’s a mix of both. The front and back are polycarbonate, which Jollying says is four-layer and aviation-grade for the ultimate in durability. It feels quite sturdy and doesn’t bend or bow the way some other, thinner shells do.

The metal Jollying logo is in the bottom-right corner, and there’s a small circle at the center of the bag’s front; it’s the FIDLOCK magnet that connects the briefcase included with the Pro set to the front of the suitcase as you travel. More on that later.

Sandwiched in between the layers of polycarbonate, though, is polyester. Two leather straps fasten magnetically to the front when it’s collapsed, as long as you have the Oxford material tucked snuggly in on all sides. Fitting the magnetic straps into their appropriate slots sometimes takes some effort and playing around, but the straps are there to collapse the bag as much as possible. Note that the carry handle also collapses into the material, so you have to hold the collapsed telescoping handle when you need to move the empty bag.

That handle extends to three different heights, which should accommodate most users. Our 5-foot 5-inch tester finds the shortest level comfortable for rolling the bag beside her or pulling it behind her on rougher surfaces. There isn’t a ton of play or wiggle to the handle, which we appreciate.

Speaking of rolling, the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro has four small spinner wheels that work quite well on smooth surfaces and turn easily around corners. On thicker carpeting, it’s easy to switch to pulling the bag instead, but we never found it too difficult to move, even fully loaded.

The suitcase also features YKK zippers that click into a TSA-approved combination lock at the top of the bag. They’re easy to use, even around corners, and the zipper pulls are quite large for good grabbing.

While this bag is carry-on sized, it is just under an inch too wide to meet the specifications of some airlines, though we don’t think you’ll have too much trouble on more permissive airlines like Delta, and it fits within the requirements of stricter U.S. airlines like Frontier. As always, check your airline’s allowable dimensions before checking in for your flight; it’s cheaper to pay for your bag at check-in than it is if they stop you at the gate.

Fit Notes

When fully set up, the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro doesn’t look much different than any other rolling carry-on luggage. The front is clean, and using the personal-item-sized briefcase that comes with it instead of a separate daypack keeps everything neat and tidy through the airport. You will need more space next to you if you spin it alongside you than you typically would, since the briefcase sticks out an extra 2.76 inches (7 cm) from the front of the bag, but that’s the only difference we noticed from other rolling bags.

However, the bag balances well on its four wheels, even with the briefcase on the front, so you don’t have to worry much about it tipping over as you wait at the gate. The handle extends and retracts easily by pushing the Jollying button on its top, and we find it pretty comfortable to hold while walking with the suitcase.

Inside The Carry On Luggage

So, while the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro doesn’t have exterior pockets, like most hardside luggage, it does come with a briefcase that acts as secondary storage accessible without opening the bag.

Most of it is made with the same Oxford polyester as the fabric on the main suitcase, though the front panel has a smoother, easier-to-wipe surface. All the polyester on the Jollying Pebble 20″ Pro is water-resistant, but the smoother surface doesn’t have a texture that will hang onto dirt or crumbs.

It has one carry handle at the top, with a tiny zippered pocket underneath it. When you open it up, you’ll find a yellow webbing strap with a jumpring at its end. Pulling it out is a squeeze, so you’ll be happy to know that this isn’t meant to hold your keys—you’d never get them back in or out of that pocket! Instead, you insert the locking suitcase zippers through the ring to hold the briefcase in place on the front of the bag. It doesn’t swing around willy-nilly, either. When you get it in the right spot on the front of the bag, the FIDLOCK magically—well, magnetically, but it feels magical—connects to the back of the briefcase to hold it in place as you walk with the suitcase. It does a great job of this, staying in place as you go up and down stairs and through the airport. There is an elastic luggage pass-through on the back if you don’t want to use the feature and would rather slide it over the suitcase handle, too.

That’s great, you think! You don’t need to pack a separate laptop bag to travel with a 15-inch computer. And you’re right, as long as you don’t mind squeezing your hand into all of the pockets. There are several: a small one on the side and two large and flat ones on the front. The front ones are good for documents, but we found it easier to stick our tech pouch into the main compartment than to squeeze cables and wall chargers into the side pocket.

There are two more pockets and a sleeve with a strap to hold your laptop in place with hook-and-loop fastener inside the briefcase’s main compartment, but it doesn’t open very widely, either. Getting a laptop in and out isn’t too bad, though the zipper will rub against your hand. Using the slip pockets halfway down wasn’t a great experience, though. Luckily, a skinny tech pouch, like the Aer Split Kit, fits nicely and is tall enough to grab from the top.

Enough about the briefcase, though—let’s get into the carry on.

It opens clamshell, though nearly all of the capacity is on the bottom once you set it up. To do so, start sliding the hard sides into place and use the snaps to keep them upright. It works best if you do the top one first, then the bottom, before doing the sides. For our sample, the left side of the bag, with the hinge, is the hardest to snap into place, but it’s worse if you try to do it first than if you do the top and bottom before attempting it.

Once you do, you’ll find a pretty simple layout. On the lid is a small slip pocket for thin items like a hat, gloves, or even a few cords. Jollying includes a small eraser inside to help you clean up the polycarbonate if it scratches.

The remaining space is on the bottom, and you actually get a little more than you do in similarly sized bags because the handle channels aren’t very deep. You’ll still need to pack around them, but they stick up less than we’ve experienced on other suitcases.

You can use packing cubes or just straight clothing, since there are two elastic straps to hold your gear in place. When I, as the primary tester, packed it up, I was able to fit four T-shirts, one tank top, two pairs of shorts, one pair of pants, a dress, a sweatshirt, workout clothing, underwear and socks, a swimsuit and coverup, a pair of flat travel shoes and a pair of sneakers, along with a toiletry bag and an extra book inside. That’s enough to get me through a week pretty much anywhere, since I could always swap out the shorts for another pair of pants and some of the tees for long-sleeved shirts and still close the bag. The hold-down straps keep everything in place as you walk through the hotel and airport. The stiff panels you put in place on the side really make it feel like a regular suitcase while you’re using it, not like the floppy expansion panels of some expandable luggage. Plus, it’s easy to live out of the suitcase since you just open the lid to get your gear, instead of a clamshell opening that takes up twice the space on a table or the floor.

However, while it’s nice to have a collapsible suitcase, we don’t love the briefcase enough to recommend investing in the Pro version. It’s a $50 price difference at the time of this review, and we just don’t think the briefcase is worth it at that price point, even though the FIDLOCK connection is fun. So, if you really need a suitcase that can fit in tighter spaces but already have a laptop bag that works for travel, the Jollying Pebble 20″ Carry On Suitcase might be a better choice. The collapsible Jollying design is compelling if you need to maximize storage space. If you have extra room, we’d probably go with a different hard or softside suitcase altogether and save yourself the hassle of setup.