What is a must-have luggage size?

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For business travel, the right answer is a good carry-on bag. You do not want to check in luggage when travelling for business: you'll need to wait for it at airports, and because there's always a risk of your bag being delayed, you'll need to drag along a second bag with the essentials anyway.

A carry-on bag is plenty even for trips of several weeks if you learn how to pack it well. Sizewise, you'll want to pick something that is well within airline limits: 55x40x20 cm is the "standard" limit but not all airlines follow this. You'll also want a soft, not hard bag. Personally, I'm partial to Antler's bags for reasonable quality at a reasonable price, but your mileage may vary.

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The people who I know travel the most swear that they always exclusively use a carry-on bag. See this question for the most common size limits for carry-ons. While I completely understand the main advantages of using only a carry-on, I rarely manage to fit my desired items in such a bag alone. I do always put valuables and absolute necessities into a carry-on which I recommend to everyone as well.

While I have way too many types of suitcases and travel bags, the one I use the most is a 26" hard-cover suitcase which is considered medium size. It can easily fit up to two weeks of clothing which is sufficient for any length of trip since longer ones require doing laundry. I live and sometimes travel to very cold places and I would say that a single jacket and boots sometimes are large enough to fill an entire carry-on bag!

Some of my suitcases are 31" models which is too big. Even if filled with the lightest items such as clothing, those suitcases end up above 50lbs/25kg at which point most airlines charge extra. So the space ends up never entirely used.

With a hard-side suitcase, nothing inside has ever been damaged, although I have had the suitcase itself dented and sometimes wheels ripped off. There are two-wheeled models where the wheels are recessed and those have yet to be broken off since they provide little area to be twisted off.

The other issue I have with only using a carry-on is the liquid limit. Even with a small set of cosmetic such as deodorant, toothpaste, sunscreen, shaving cream, aftershave, sanitizer, it is easy to end up over the limit. Add a few additional items such as lotion, lib balm, lens cleaning fluid, repellent, etc and you can see how it is difficult to carry all that within the rules. I also use a razor which is not allowed to be in carry-on. Sure, you can buy this at your destination but do you really want to do that every place you go? A tube of shaving gel can last almost a year, so buying it often would be wasteful.

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