I had bought a cheap very light weight carry on years ago and it lasted me about 6 years of occasional use. But the wheel were horrible. The material also had early on shown the wear and tear. So this was on sale and I wanted something that would have better wheel and be extremely light weight. This seems to fit the bill very well. I wanted to travel to China which is why I bought this, but well with the virus... It has a really nice pocket at the top that will hold a lot of bulky things you might want to have quicker access to, even a hair dryer and a brush with plenty of extra space. The pocket in front even easily fits some bulky things. But to keep things like papers I would use the back pocket which easily takes unfolded letter size and probably A4 but do not think legal would work well. It could take a laptop, but not my 15.6" with its very thin bezel.