First, the bag itself is very nice. I love the variety of pockets. Additionally, it's the best convertible backpack to pannier I've ever used, it is comfortable as a backpack, converts quickly to a pannier, and secures firmly to standard bike tracks. The rain shield is a nice bonus. I also love the sustainability features. 100% recycled nylon is fantastic!
Second, the Joey T3 is worse than useless. The features rarely work and are always losing connectivity. Then the battery, every random battery pack I've ever bought holds a charge longer than this thing. Unless you plan to charge it every single night, it will never have any juice when you need it most. Even as a free add on it's a bad deal, you should turn it down and use the cool pockets for a functional battery pack.

I recently purchased a convertible lite pannier/ backpack from these folks, then saw the Alpha with its Joey T3 system and I was intrigued. It was a little confusing because the websites said the Joey wasn't available in Canada, but it is and you definitely get one if you order the Alpha from the Canadian website. I haven't done any serious traveling with it yet, but it charged my phone and the other day I couldn't find my phone so I asked the Joey to find out for me and when it did, that was worth the price of admission. Both my new pannier/ backpack combos are fantastic, can't wait to see how they hold up in the winter commute. Highly recommend.

Best backpack I’ve ever owned.

I’ve been daily driving this bag for a few weeks now and can confidently recommend it to my friends and family. I love that it’s able to fit my 17in work laptop, is super easy to convert between backpack and pannier, has some standard water resistance supplemented by a rain cover, and is overall a well made bag.

My biggest concern when I got the bag was that I would feel the pannier loops through the back of the bag, and it would be uncomfortable. The good news is that as long as the clips are appropriately spaced to sit between my spine and shoulder blades, I don’t notice them. I do notice them when I have my laptop inside the bag, but I rarely use my bag in the backpack configuration during the workday, and my laptop is larger than normal. A 13 of 15inch will probably be a non issue.

One small issue I noticed is that the zippers catch on the corners of the large pocket out of the box. This issue has been mitigated as the bag has worked in, and it no longer snags as easily. Additionally, the rain cover that comes with the bag needs a little adjustment to fit properly, so I would suggest testing it out and tightening it appropriately before you need to throw it on in the rain. To it’s credit though, it did withstand a 30min downpour with no issues or leaking, so very happy with the performance of the rain cover.

Overall this is an excellent bag I would recommend without hesitation.

Have been using alpha for months and I love it. Sturdy, waterproof, secure attachment, locally made and looks amazing. Please make it in more colors.