About UKEIN

UKEIN makes travel cases and travel bags, and this is the catalogue laid out in full. The range is small on purpose: one hardside shell in three sizes, a softside carry-on, and a short line of backpacks and duffels that go with them. Nothing here is a season, and nothing gets replaced every spring.

The hard cases share one construction. The shell is polycarbonate, textured so that the first scrape does not read as damage. The wheels are dual spinners that turn through a full circle, the handle is a three-stage aluminium tube, the zips are alloy, and the lock is the TSA type with a resettable code. Inside there are zippered divider panels, compression straps on one side, and a wet pocket that keeps a swimsuit away from a shirt.

The soft side of the range answers a different question. The expandable carry-on is fabric rather than shell, which means it takes an awkward shape better and grows from forty-five to fifty-five litres when the way home is fuller than the way out. It carries a padded pocket for a laptop up to seventeen inches. The backpacks and duffels add a charging port at the strap, a vented compartment for shoes at the base, and a wet pocket of their own.

The UKEIN approach to colour is worth a sentence. One shape is made in up to fifteen colourways, from black and cream through pink, violet and a run of greens, and the trim is the same cognac on almost all of them. The name beside each price is the one on the label, so the colour you pick is the colour that arrives.

A trip turns on a few figures: the cabin dimensions, the litres, the weight in pounds, the laptop pocket range. You will find them beside each case, so you can hold them against your airline's limit before you choose a colour. Prices move with the season, and the figure at checkout is the one that counts.

There are things this range does not do, and they are worth saying before you buy rather than after. None of these cases is waterproof. A hard shell keeps rain off the contents for a walk across a car park, and the seam at the zip is not a seal.

None of them carries a manufacturer weight allowance either, so the airline limit is the one that counts, and a twenty-eight inch case reaches it while there is still room inside. The spinner wheels are quiet on a terminal floor and loud on a cobbled street. A TSA lock is a deterrent that an inspector can open, not a safe.

Every piece is bought through our retail partner, and the buttons here open the exact colour you chose. Checkout, delivery and returns happen there. Before that step, the ten UKEIN lines sit side by side here with their sizes, so the decision takes a minute rather than an evening.

The photographs are the maker's own, and the buying step happens at our retail partner. Write to us about what a specification means and we will answer.