First Impressions: Rimowa Classic Cabin Carry-On

Here’s something that might surprise you: despite many years of travelling across the world, I’ve long been woefully behind on my luggage game.

With this in mind, while on a recent trip to Europe, I decided to take advantage of the weaker euro and the EU tax refund in order to make my first major luggage purchase in the form of a Rimowa Classic Cabin Carry-On.

As I’ve now been able to take this piece of gear for a few spins, I wanted to share my first impressions of the product. I’ll also be updating this review in the future after I’ve taken it on multiple trips and can comment on the durability.

About Rimowa

Rimowa is a German company that was founded in the late 1800s. Currently majority-owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Rimowa offers products enriched in German engineering with the luxury you’d expect from the LVMH brand.

While Rimowa started off selling wooden trunks over 120 years ago, they’ve grown and evolved into a high-end luxury that now sells a variety of top-quality bags, travel accessories, and of course, luggage.

Rimowa Classic Cabin Carry-On – Model

Rimowa has six travel luggage models in their collection: Original, Classic, Hybrid, Essential, Essential Lite, and Essential Sleeve. All six have a similar look, with slightly different functionalities.

Within each model, you can choose from three different main size categories: Cabin, Check-In, or the largest Trunk size. Furthermore, there are options to customize the exact size within each size category too. 

Ultimately, I went with the heritage-inspired Classic model and the Cabin Carry-On size. I wanted luggage that I could consistently carry onto large and small aircraft, rather than having to check it at the gate.

I had also considered the Original, which is slightly cheaper, instead of the Classic. The difference really came down to design choice.

The Original design has more rounded corners and plastic handles, whereas the Classic version has pointier corners. This creates a little more storage room on the inside, and it also has leather handles, which I really liked.

The Rimowa Classic Cabin Carry-On design is also ever-so-slightly larger than the Original version. While they both have identical measurements of 21.7 × 15.7 × 9.1 inches and weights of 9.5 pounds, the Classic Cabin has a volume of 7.9 gallons, while the Original Cabin has a…