Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For the last 20 years I have used nothing but Travel pro luggage (as a former airline crew member) so I'm used to a very high quality bag. I figured that I'd try this "smart" luggage and spent three weeks doing my homework. First of all, of all the current "smart" luggage currently available on the market the Raden gets the highest rating. It came down to the Raden and the BlueSmart bags and the Bluesmart was smaller even though it was smarter so I went with more space and less brains. So a few points. 1. All this raving about this bag being the "iphone of bags" are vastly overstated. Its a good looking bag in its simplicity but lets not go overboard. I doubt that it will turn heads in the airport. I'm taking it to Philly next week so we'll see. If people stop me to oogle over my bag I'll report that back here. 2. Smart luggage? Disruptive? The thing of the future? Another huge exaggeration. The latest version of the Raden app is as barebones as its suitcase. So much so that all of the cool features that Raden has on its website are now GONE. No bag sharing. No flight status. No airport traffic status. GONE. Now all you have is a scale, a battery meter, and a TOTALLY USELESS location tool. I like the fact that there is a chat window built into the app for direct customer service. Other than that the app doesn't do much besides weigh the bag (which it did very accurately) and tell you when the battery has been charged. Think about this, why do you even need a scale in a 22" carry on bag? Unless you are going to fill it with bowling balls or you wear lead underpants you can't fit enough clothes in there for it to be overweight! So the point of having a scale is kind of silly. 3. More about the Location tool. Three words: Are you kidding? The location tool will tell you that your bag is generally in SAME TOWN as you but doesn't put a pin on a map so it could be anywhere within dozens of square miles and hundreds of buildings. Right now, my A22 is in my closet, 15 feet away from me, but the map shows that it is located somewhere in the Frankfort, IL general area (there is no drop pin). And since your bag needs to be in Bluetooth range of your phone, if for some reason someone wheels off with your bag while your not looking what are you going to do about it? It doesn't have an alarm to tell you that your bag has been taken out of range. It doesn't tell you the exact address at which your bag was located. It doesn't even tell you where it is if another Raden app user finds it because it can't show itself on the map? This tool is about as useful putting a screen door on a submarine. 4. Build quality. The bag actually feels cheap and rickety compared to my travel pro Crew 11 spinner. Travel pro has magnets that force the wheels to track true so its a smooth ride. The Raden wheels feel like a shoping cart and it tracks where ever it wants to go. The handle feels VERY rickety and wobbly. Where the Travelpro handle is rock solid, the Raden handle has a lot of play and feels like its going to fall off. The interior is good, but missing features that you might expect in a $300 bag like straps, suit carrier, etc. I am a technologist and an MIS professor so I like gadgets, but I am so disappointed because all the hype and promise does not live up to the reality of the execution. This bag is not smart by any stretch of the imagination. You can get the same functionality with an extra battery pack from Walgreens and a $20 Tile tracking tag. Is it worth $300 - not in your wildest dreams. This is all hype and very little substance until such time as Raden makes their app much more useful and increase the build quality. In case you are wondering, I'm not sending it back because its a conversation piece and I want to support startup companies like Raden. But make no mistake, this product is a swing and a miss. Its essentially cheap luggage, with mostly useless technology.