Think Tank Photo Vision 13 Shoulder Bag (Graphite)

I love Mindshift bags, have 3, and bought this ThinkTank shoulder bag to accompany me on a 2 month trip to Thailand during the Monsoon Season this coming summer. I wanted to carry my laptop, spare SSD's, along with a 2nd body, flash and a 100-400 GM lens too big for my Mindshift Photocross 10 sling bag I am taking, thinking I would work out of the Vision 13 when using the larger lens (minus laptop). It will possibly rain a bit every day and I need a bag that can work in these conditions. I received the Vision 13 and maybe I was expecting too much, but being a ThinkTank bag I expected it to work in wet conditions. Instead this bag will not work during the daily rains that can happen, even light rains would have meant water getting into the bag and my gear getting wet. Below are the specific issues with this bag. Top Lid Design Flaw #1: The bag top opening is 15" wide by approximately 5" deep. However the Top Flap that closes the bag is only 13-1/2 inches wide. So there is a 3/4" wide by 5" deep " open hole" at each of the top sides of the bag with no covering!! Unbelievable, what a poor design! Water, dirt and dust can easily enter here and get on the exposed camera equipment inside. Top Lid Design Flaw #2A: ThinkTank's solution to the opening problem at the top of the bag is a zippered covering that fits below the top opening with the zipper inside the bag. This is the problem, it is not AT the top of the opening but 3/4" of inch below it. So all the water, dirt and dust that could enter the bag through the holes in the top sides is now resting on the flap that is there to protect your equipment. When you zip this open, rain water will certainly fall into the bag. If the covering was at the top with an exterior zipper it would have been much easier to deal with. But as-is you need to do what Ted of TT did in the in-house promo video on these bags when he showed how your camera would not fall out if you "accidently" turned the bag upside and shake it. But I did not know that I would might be needing to be doing this every rainy day! Top Lid Design Flaw #2B: The zipper being set 3/4 of an inch below the top of the bag and inside the bag makes is VERY difficult to open and close the zippers around the inside corners. (Maybe that is why all my old DSLR shoulder bags I had with a zipper top has the zippers on the outside of the bag, not the inside.) They could have put fixed material at the 2 back corners, but no, the zipper has to close about 2 inches on each side in the back, so 4 corners to deal with, not 2. To compound the problem ThinkTank got cheap and put only 1 zipper here and not 2 zippers that could meet in the middle, like the front pocket has. With 2 zippers you could have opened each end only and kept the rest closed for example, but that is not possible with only 1 zipper. If you want to pull something out of the right side of the bag you need to open the zipper from the left side 95% of the way and deal with 3 inside corners. As said above, but bears repeating, is it difficult to open and close the zipper at the inside corners and there was no way I was going to deal with this multiple times a day trying to get into the bags interior. And NO the solution is not to put the Rain Cover on each time, that is also a problem as rain cover has issues as well. It barely covers the top back corners of the bag and ThinkTank provided very small and difficult to deal with snap hooks to latch the open space at the top back corners to the bottom of the rain cover. So the Rain Cover is not a quick and easy solution. A overall simple solution would have been to make the top flap wider than the bags opening, so if you didn't want to deal with the interior flap at least your gear would have had protection. And to add interior folding V-flaps like so many bags like this have. Why this wasn't done is beyond me, but to leave a 3/4" by 5" hole on each side of the top makes the design as is a no-go for anyone concerned about weather tightness. And there should be a full width waterproof zipper across the width of the bag on the top of the folding flap, to allow for easy access, so no 2nd interior flap needed. (The Tenba DNA Messenger bags I looked at today as a possible replacement have a full width top with V flaps and a full width WP access zipper.) Other Issues: Laptop slot: The bag is 15" wide at the top but only 13" wide at the bottom, it slopes inward each side 1". I wasn't sure my 14" Mac Book M1 Pro would fit, but it did. However because the bottom of the laptop slot is 2" narrower than the top, the tight fitting neoprene sleeve I normally keep it in does not fit, it stops about 3" from the bottom. The shoulder strap, though comfortable, is permanently fixed to the bag and there is no rotational adjustment. When you set the bag down the strap can twist a bit and you have to straighten it out. If I would have kept this bag I would have cut the strap and replaced it with one with rotational adjusters on both ends. So overall a 2 out of 5 if you dealing with wet weather a lot, maybe a 3.x out of 5 if not. ThinkTank really needs to rethink the top flap design and come up with a easy to use weather sealed design.