That’s important, especially if you, like most people, don’t have a freezer that can produce enough ice to fill a cooler and you tend to resort to buying bags of ice from the grocery store or liquor store. We’ve tested coleman instant tent Polar Bear coolers for seven years now, buying them or receiving test units from Polar Bear. Recently, however, we’ve been let down by the lifespan of its soft coolers (though not this backpack in particular).
In other cases, you can spend far less without a substantial drop in overall performance. It’s also helpful to consider how often you find yourself needing the cooling and insulating services these ice chests provide and how burly and rugged you need your gear to be. For soft coolers, we recommend anything in the 20- to 24-can range.
Sometimes you don’t need that much space, but you do need excellent performance. The rugged Roadie has a beefy, integrated hinge, and the sturdy rotomolded exterior protects contents from the trials of all your outdoor adventures. It’s built to be a seat when you finally reach your destination (Yeti even sells a seat cushion to go with it, though we haven’t tried that out). This latest version of the Roadie includes numerous upgrades we love, including redesigned latches that let you easily open the lid one-handed and a flexible, webbing top handle. The Roadie 24 is just over 13 inches tall inside, which allows standard wine and 2L bottles to stand upright. The Roadie also outlasted all other personal-sized models in our insulation testing.
It wasn’t a major issue, but it also wasn’t a reassuring thing to see on a cooler. Nothing broke, and we could simply press it back into place, but each time we did this it got noticeably looser. By the end of our testing, it had loosened to the point that simply lifting on the handle was enough to pop the lid open, making the latch essentially useless. We liked that the BMX wasn’t as heavy and bulky as the Yeti and RTIC. The top handle made the cooler easy for just one person to carry, even when it was fully loaded. The rubber gasket and rubber feet weren’t quite as securely attached, and we felt that both could have been pried off with some effort.
Electric coolers are expensive and only make sense if you have a generator running full-time during your camping trips. The disadvantages (other than the premium price tags) are that rotomolded coolers tend to be heavier and bulkier than other coolers. Although the handles are made of a foam that feels cheaper than the Yeti’s rubber, they were actually more comfortable to carry.