Cabin Zero - The Ultimate Bag Solution For Budget Airline Woes
We’re thrifty travellers. If there’s a way to travel cheaply, then you can guarantee that we will find how to do it. As backpackers, over the last four years, we have always chosen to book the cheapest ticket available on all our travels. Whether that’s choosing to take a 32 hour Indian train ride over a flight, or choosing to sleep in Guangzhou airport to save a few hundred pounds on a flight back from Bangkok, wherever we can, we try to maximise our budget!
When travelling overland it is much easier to find cheap transport, but when you fly, prices suddenly sky rocket. Across the globe there are hundreds of different budget airlines offering cheap flights; from AirAsia in the east to RyanAir in the west. Budget airlines are great for finding cheap seats, but when it comes to taking more than just your toothbrush with you, you’re suddenly open to a whole host of other expensive fees. Budget airlines have incredibly strict baggage allowances, if you’ve booked the cheapest ticket, it usually means you can take nothing more than a small bag that can fit underneath the seat in front of you.
We recently encountered these strict baggage rules on our latest adventure to Perugia, Italy. We had scored ourselves some incredibly cheap flight tickets, but when it came to baggage, we could only bring with us only one small, under-seat bag. Thinking that John would have to succumb to spending the cost of another flight ticket to bring all of Ellie’s outfits, we scoured the internet trying to find a solution to our baggage woes. This is when Cabin Zero saved the day …
Disclosure: We were kindly given bags from Cabin Zero, however, it is worth noting that we reached out to Cabin Zero not the other way around! We found their bags online, thought they looked ace and contacted them. This article has been written based on our honest opinions and recommendations after using their bags.
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Cabin Zero Classic Tech 28l Bag Review - Our Honest Opinions
We have travelled for over a decade with two of Cabin Zero’s Classic 36L Cabin Backpack’s, taking them with us as we travelled to the hot baths of Budapest, the Roman ruins of Rome and the picturesque streets of Paris. These bags have been fantastic and have served us extremely well, however, when it comes to the cheapest tickets available with RyanAir, these bags are just too big!
We had booked the cheapest tickets we could find with RyanAir to take us from London Stansted to Perugia. Our tickets would allow us to take just one bag each. The bags could be no bigger than 40 × 30 × 20 cm and would have to fit under the seat in front of us. After a lot of searching online and trying (unsuccessfully) to somehow minimise the dimensions of our 36L bag, we stumbled upon Cabin Zero’s range of 28L bags that were the perfect size to fit with RyanAir’s strict under-seat bag dimensions.
We reached out to Cabin Zero and they very kindly gave us two of their ‘Classic Tech 28L’ in the colours ‘Silver Storm’ and ‘Georgian Khaki’ to try out, alongside a set of their ‘Ultralight Packing Cubes’ and a set of their ‘Lux Compression Packing Cubes’.
When we were not moving accommodation, the bags were also fantastic as day bags!
The bags were very similar in style to our beloved 36L versions, with internal pockets, a full clamshell opening and two padded handles (one on the side and one at the top) to make it easy to manoeuvre on to planes / trains / buses etc. Inside the clamshell compartment, the bag has an interior sleeve (perfect size for flip-flops) and two inner zipped pockets (one mesh and both with zippers) that are perfect for organisation of smaller items. On the front of the backpack there is another large, quick access pocket which was flat and we found great for storing our passports and other documents. Behind the main clamshell compartment sits a large, padded laptop sleeve that could easily fit our 13-inch Macbook Air’s even inside their very padded Tomtoc sleeves. On the side, the bags come with two compression straps and a water bottle holder.
When it came to pack for our trip to Italy, gone was our SE Asian wardrobe of comfy, cooling, sportswear and instead, we laid out outfits that we thought (or at least very much hoped) would help us fit in amongst the effortlessly elegant Italians!
Ellie took two dresses, a mini skirt, a maxi skirt, a pair of shorts, 3 vest-tops, 2 t-shirts, swimwear, a pair of flip-flops, a pair of sandals, enough underwear and socks for a week, pj’s, sunglasses, toiletries, our Sony RX100 camera, her kindle, an adaptor, a portable charger, headphones and even managed to stuff a leather cross-body bag into the Cabin Zero. John on the other hand was a little more restrained with his shoe choices and took just one additional pair of flip flops, alongside a pair of chino’s, 2 pairs of shorts, 2 shirts, 3 t-shirts, trunks, enough underwear and socks for a week, sunglasses, sleepwear, a cross-body bag, toiletries, an adaptor, a portable charger, headphones, a kindle and an iPad.
Using the packing cubes, we managed to squeeze all our clothes into one large and one medium cube per person. John used the Lux Compression Packing Cubes and Ellie used a combination of a large Ultralight Packing Cubes and a medium of the ‘Lux’ style. With two packing cubes each, there was still plenty of room in the bag to pack out toiletries, bags and shoes. The ‘Lux’ compression cubes are a little bigger and fit a lot more into them, whereas the ultralight are (you’ve guessed it) are a bit smaller and more streamlined. We absolutely love travelling with packing cubes. Not only are they great for packing, but they make organisation so much easier.
We had planned to take our laptops with us so that we could work whilst away, but in the end we decided that we deserved a break and that if we were going to Italy, it would be rude not to spend the fortnight sipping Aperol Spritz’s on historic Umbrian squares. If we had wanted to, we could easily have fitted our laptops in the bags.
Travelling with the bags was a dream. On our multi-year globe trotting adventure we did not travel especially light. We had front and back backpacks (Salkan if you’re interested) but this time, it was just one small backpack.
We were flying out of London Stansted so we had a multi-stage travel day. Starting in Streatham, South London, we had a 3 part journey to even get to the airport consisting of a bus, a tube and then a National Express coach. It was so easy to travel with the small backpacks. We didn’t have to worry about blocking the tube doors, having to load the bags underneath the coach and we even managed to sit comfortably upstairs on the bus to Brixton!
At London Stansted, we flew through security (advantages of carry-on only, no check-in or bag-drop!) and the RyanAir staff just waved us onto the plane without even double checking the size of our bags. We had previously checked they would fit into the RyanAir bag sizers and they easily did so we hadn’t been worried. On the plane they slid underneath the seat in front of us and were super convenient to carry on and off the plane. When we arrived in Perugia, we caught the bus to the city, keeping the bags on the floor in front of us. They fitted on the racks and in the overhead storage but they were small enough just to keep on us, it was so easy to hop on and off transport with these little bags.
Over the next week, we switched from an apartment in the centre of Perugia, to a beautiful hilltop village in Umbria. We used the bags as day bags to carry all our essentials as we explored the beautiful towns of Cortona, Assisi, Montepulciano and many more, before finishing with a couple of days in the beautiful Little Italy Hostel back in the heart of Perugia. The bags were always comfy and fitted everything we needed and were the perfect solution to our baggage woes with RyanAir!
As you can see we really loved using the Cabin Zero bags, the only improvement we could suggest, is that we would love it if the bags came with a small keyring so that you could attach your house keys to it. When we got back to our flat, we had to dig through and unpack a little to reach our keys. Another honest thing to consider is that it is definitely possible to overstuff these bags beyond the strict airline requirements, however, if you use the packing cubes you will be fine!
It is also worth noting that the bags do not come with a waist strap. We didn’t find this an issue as they are smaller bags and were not as heavy as our normal backpacks we used when travelling the world, however, if you’re walking a long way, this may be a bit of a problem if you’ve overpacked. As we were travelling to Perugia, we only ever carried our bags for less than an hour and found them to be extremely comfortable.
We’ll let you know if we carry for them longer and will update this article to reflect this!
Buying Your Own Cabin Zero Bag - Get Your Discount Code Here
If we’ve inspired you to buy your own bag, or you would like to browse some of Cabin Zero’s other products on offer, then head over to our:
ADVENTURES OF JELLIE Cabin Zero Store
Once you’ve found your perfect bag and colour, just enter the discount code: ADVENTURESOFJELLIE at the checkout to get 15% of your order!
The cabin friendly, Classic Tech 28L was perfect for our needs and we cannot wait to use them on our next escape. If you’re not travelling with a laptop then make sure you check out the ‘Classic Cabin 28L’ which comes with all the same features of the Classic Tech 28L but has a larger interior compartment as it doesn’t feature the back, padded laptop sleeve (or water bottle holder).
Final Thoughts
We were very kindly gifted these bags to try out by Cabin Zero, but honestly, trust us when we say they were brilliant. The bags fitted all we needed for a fortnight’s break to Italy, were extremely comfy and as they are ‘cabin approved’ for RyanAir, removed all worry about extra bag fees at the airport. These bags give you licence to impulse buy that cheap flight ticket. With these little backpacks you know you can travel comfortably even on the cheapest of seats!
Thanks for reading,
John & Ellie x
#adventuresofjellie
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