Travel can be an exciting, adventurous pursuit, but as any frequent flier will tell you, it's rife with potential headaches.
Bag too heavy? That could cost you up to $200 in extra fees.
Airline misplace your luggage? Prepare to fill out a lot of forms and, potentially, say goodbye to those Tabasco cufflinks.
Laptop out of juice? Hope you like strangers because there are only four plugs at the gate, and everyone wants to top up.
While it can't prevent weather delays or silence crying babies, Bluesmart's 9. 4-pound, $399 "smart" suitcase features a suite of baked-in technologies designed to cure many of the most common traveling ills.
Before you leave home, pull the case's aluminum handle, and the free Bluesmart app (iOS/Android) will display its approximate weight on your phone. The app also lets users build a travel itinerary, check flight status and track various travel statistics, such as distance traveled and countries visited.
In the airport, a proximity alert will also notify travelers via the app if they're potentially leaving their belongings behind. The case also features locking capability, again via the app, to secure its contents remotely. In compliance with Transportation Security Administration requirements, the Bluesmart provides secondary access via a physical key and can be opened by airport officials.
When going through security check, Bluesmart's laptop storage compartment offers ready access to devices with screens as large as 15 inches. Once they're at the gate, travelers have access to two USB ports to recharge their devices using a built-in, 10,000-milliamp hour battery - enough juice to fill a smart phone multiple times.
The Bluesmart is designed to fit the carry-on dimensions of most airlines, but if it needs to be checked, the suitcase has built-in GPS tracking - with SIM coverage in more than 100 countries - to help locate it, should it be lost in-transit.