Editorial policy

We are independent. The Travel Gear Guide has no parent publisher, no brand partner and no advertiser with a say in what appears here. Our only obligation is to the reader who is about to spend money on a suitcase.

Independence

• No brand, retailer or PR agency sees a piece before it publishes.
• No payment, gift, trip or discount buys coverage, a ranking or a rating.
• We do not publish sponsored posts or accept guest contributions.

Sourcing and attribution

• Specs are quoted from the manufacturer's own published page, with the date we checked it.
• Owner reviews are summarised and counted, never copied verbatim, and are always labelled as owner reports rather than our own findings.
• First-hand observations name the trip or the period they come from, so you can tell a week from a year.
• We do not report instrument readings, drop tests or lab procedures — we run none.

How this site is produced

Drafts are prepared with software assistance, including large language models, and every piece is edited and signed off by the named author and one other editor. The byline is accountable for every factual claim on the page: our rule is that a sentence gets published only if the named author can stand behind it. Where a claim comes from aggregated owner reviews rather than direct experience, the page says so.

Updates and corrections

Pages carry a published date and a last-updated date. Substantive corrections are noted in the text rather than made silently; prices and availability are re-checked when a page is updated and are otherwise accurate as of the date shown. Write to hello@thetravelgearguide.com if something here is wrong.

Affiliate relationships

See the affiliate disclosure.