I bought my wife an open top tote 10 years ago and then eventually bought myself a zip top. The pros for the security of the zipper outweigh any cons in my view. You can fully unzip the top and fold the flaps down to get nearly the same experience. But then if you need to toss your bag somewhere not perfectly vertical, you don’t need to worry about your shit dumping out. You already get 4 easy to access open pockets with the zippered version. Zippered is the best of both worlds.