Picture this: you’re sprinting through Frankfurt airport with a connecting flight in 20 minutes, your laptop bag is sliding off your shoulder, your coffee is getting cold in your death grip, and you need to fish out your boarding pass from somewhere deep in your carry-on. Meanwhile, your suitcase is doing absolutely nothing to help except rolling behind you like a faithful but useless dog. This scenario plays out thousands of times daily across airports worldwide, and yet most luggage companies seem content to just make their bags shinier or add another zipper pocket. It’s a design failure we’ve all just accepted.
A Colorado-based company named 4MYTU, a clever play on the phrase “for my tour,” seems to have taken this stagnation personally. Their Tank series of luggage presents itself as a direct, almost aggressive, response to these common travel grievances. More than simply slapping a new color or adding another superfluous pocket, it’s a ground-up attempt to infuse genuine, user-centric problem-solving into a product category long dominated by brand prestige and aesthetics. The Tank Carry-On (20″), Bigger Tank Carry-On (22″), and Tank Trunk (27″) each tackle specific pain points with solutions that feel obvious once you see them, which is usually the hallmark of genuinely smart design.
Designer: Sam
Colorado winters probably teach you a thing or two about building stuff that won’t fall apart when stressed, and 4MYTU’s approach reflects that pragmatic mindset. The Tank Carry-On starts at 20 inches with a polycarbonate shell that boasts twice the impact resistance of ABS plastic, which matters when baggage handlers treat your stuff like a shot put. The 100% recycled polycarbonate construction sounds nice for your environmental conscience, but the real benefit is durability: this material can flex without cracking, meaning your shell stays intact even after getting tossed around cargo holds. Weight clocks in around 2.5-3kg for the 20-inch model, which puts it in the heavier camp compared to ultra-light alternatives, but you’re getting serious structural integrity in return. The trade-off makes sense if you’ve ever had a lightweight bag crack at the worst possible moment.
Let’s begin with the most obvious rethink, which is how you get into the thing. Traditional clamshell suitcases force you to splay your entire life open on the floor, an act that feels both public and spatially inefficient in a tiny hotel room. The Tank Carry-On models (the 20 and 22-inch) feature a front-opening lid with a dedicated, padded laptop compartment. This is a design choice rooted in pure user empathy. It means you can breeze through airport security without performing luggage surgery, grabbing your tech with one smooth motion. The 27-inch Trunk also opens from the front, forgoing the laptop sleeve for a deep, single-cavity packing space that’s far easier to access in tight quarters than a 50/50 split design.
Then there’s the handle, which has perhaps been the weakest link and perhaps the least-innovated feature on most trolley bags. For as long as we’ve had rolling bags, the telescoping handle has done exactly one job, and it’s never done it with much flair. The team at 4MYTU created a patented, multi-function handle that feels almost offensively practical. It integrates a stable cup holder, a built-in phone or tablet stand for watching media on the go, and a pair of deployable hooks for hanging anything you’d like to get off your hands, whether it’s a shopping bag from an impulse buy at the duty free store, a jacket that you plan on wearing in-flight, or even a tote that you want to keep on you as a carry-on but don’t want to carry as you navigate the airport. This is the kind of elegant engineering that solves a dozen little travel headaches in one fell swoop, freeing up your hands to deal with tickets, kids, or just the existential dread of a flight delay.
Most suitcase wheels are a noisy, clattering afterthought, cheap plastic discs that catch on every crack in the pavement. 4MYTU went in a completely different direction, outfitting the Tank series with 360-degree skateboard wheels. These are not just a stylistic choice; they house double bearings for enhanced stability and a dual shock absorption system to create a smoother glide over uneven surfaces. The outer wheel layer is a soft polyurethane, which the company claims reduces rolling noise by at least 20 percent. The result is a suitcase that feels like it’s floating, moving silently and effortlessly even when it’s packed to the gills using its 35 percent expansion feature.
As mentioned before, the shell itself is made of 100% polycarbonate, a material choice that will resonate with anyone who geeks out on industrial design. Inside, the story continues with a lining made from recycled RPET fabric, with each suitcase giving a new life to approximately 15 plastic soda bottles. This soft-touch fabric is GRS-certified, antibacterial, and moisture-resistant, showing a commitment to durability that extends all the way to the interior materials.
The IDEA award-winning 22-inch “Bigger Tank Carry-On” carves out a particularly useful niche. It’s engineered to hit the sweet spot for frequent flyers, maximizing every possible inch of packing space while still adhering to most domestic and international carry-on size limits. It does have a notable weight of 8.6 pounds, or about 3.9 kilograms. This is where the inevitable trade-off occurs. You receive incredibly robust construction, that brilliant multi-function handle, and convenient front access, but you sacrifice the feather-light profile of more minimalist brands. For travelers who prioritize functional features and long-term durability over shaving off every last ounce, it is a very compelling and logical proposition.
For those embarking on longer journeys, the 27-inch Tank Trunk scales the concept up beautifully. It logically sheds the front laptop pocket, an unnecessary feature for a checked bag, but wisely retains the front-opening design for much easier unpacking in a hotel room. A particularly clever feature is the set of raised protective strips on the back of the case. This simple addition prevents the pristine polycarbonate shell from getting scuffed or dirty when you inevitably lay the suitcase flat. When you deploy the expansion zipper, its internal volume becomes comparable to that of a standard 30-inch suitcase. This is a serious piece of equipment for people who need to pack for a week or more and expect their gear to arrive unscathed.
Beyond the headline features, a host of smaller details reveal a deep commitment to the user experience. The TSA-approved lock uses a one-touch open mechanism that is friendly to your fingernails. The zippers are a double-layer, anti-explosion design that is also “pen-proof” to deter casual theft. The telescoping handle offers five different height levels, making it comfortable even for taller travelers. A built-in port supports both USB-A and USB-C charging, connected to your own power bank stowed inside. Even the bottom of the suitcase has an integrated groove, providing a crucial handhold when lifting the bag into an overhead bin or the trunk of a car.
The redesign occurs not just on a physical level, but a broad sustainable level too – the exterior and interior are both made from recycled materials, and for the outer shell, the molding process at the factory is reportedly powered entirely by solar energy. 4MYTU states that the production of one suitcase saves approximately 37 kilograms of CO2. Perhaps most importantly for the product’s lifecycle, the wheels are designed to be easily replaceable by the user. This simple, repair-focused decision elevates the suitcase from a potentially disposable item to a long-term, maintainable travel companion, representing a practical and meaningful approach to reducing waste.
So, does the 4MYTU Tank series represent the next evolution of luggage? It feels like a significant and confident step in that direction. It avoids the trap of trying to completely reinvent the form factor, instead focusing on meticulously re-engineering every single point of interaction. Every design choice feels deliberate and deeply rooted in solving the real, nagging frustrations of modern travel. The 20-inch Tank Carry-On and the 22-inch model are priced in the neighborhood of $340 and $345, respectively, while the capacious 27-inch Tank Trunk commands a price of $435. This places the luggage firmly in competition with other design-forward, direct-to-consumer brands that have captured the market’s attention.
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