Rolled packing cubes felt like a downgrade until I hit 14 days in Japan
After 10 years of folding everything flat I switched to cubes for a two week trip through Tokyo and Kyoto and my bag finally stopped turning into a wrinkled mess by day four, so am I alone in thinking the before and after only shows up on longer hauls?
The real thing nobody talks about is how cubes change your laundry math on a long trip. After day 7 or 8 you stop unpacking everything and just pull one cube out at a time, so the stuff you already wore doesn't get mixed back in with the clean stuff. On a 4 day trip none of that matters because you never hit that point where the bag starts eating itself. Two weeks is where the system actually kicks in, and that's probably why people who only do long weekends swear it's a waste.