In an ideal world, we’d spend on flights to the best vacation destinations just to put our luggage through the kind of real-world tests you’d put yourself through. Our budgets are not in the thousands, we need to find more suitable ways to simulate the conditions at home.

First, we fill the cases with a mixture of heavy and soft items and zip them up. We walk them inside our homes, across hardwood floors, thick carpets, thin rugs — exactly the kinds of surfaces you’d find in your own home and inside a variety of hotels, Airbnb rooms and guest houses that you find on your travels. Then we drop them down the stairs. Not because we’re cruel, but because it’s a good way to simulate the kind of brutal treatment cases tend to get from airport baggage handlers.

Cases often break due to baggage handlers being too harsh, with broken wheels being all too common. So we dropped them on their wheels from all angles over and over again. And then again. We pulled them and twisted them. We put pressure on the handle. Can it support our weight and can it withstand dragging in a bad situation when your flight is delayed and you missed the dinner service at your hotel?

We take them outside, still loaded with heavy stuff, and drag them over the cobblestones of the sidewalk, along the old stone roads and up and down the curbs. Are they shivering? Are the tires scraped? Are the handles bent? Are they scratching? These are all the things we are looking for. Finally, we take a close look at the zippers and materials to check for any signs of loose stitching or other manufacturer defects that suggest quality control could be better.

If they do not pass the tests, they will not be included in the list.