You have a small cooler, a medium cooler, and a large cooler. At BestReviews, we make choosing the best products easy with our in-depth research and testing. If you’re ready to buy an Ozark Trail cooler, our shopping guide has all the information you need. It can keep drinks cold for several days and the wheels on the bottom are great for hauling it from place to place. It has anti-microbial properties and it’s strong enough that a bear can’t break into it. The ice retention of this cooler makes it top-tier for road trips or camping.
This cooler is perfect for weekend camping thanks to its excellent ice retention. Yeti coolers are a well recognized brand and they are backed by a 3-year warranty. If you’ve got the money then this is probably going to be your best option. But when it comes to value for money, given how bad the quality of some of the s are I don’t feel they offer great value for money compared to a Yeti.
Though it’s a bit too tall to be able to leave in place when we want to make the bed, it fits just fine on the front seat. If you have a bigger van though, it would double as an additional seat in the cabin. How does this compare to some of the premium coolers on the market such as Yeti? We think it’s right up there with Yeti and at just a fraction of the cost. The lower-end can models take a very traditional approach in styling.
Featuring a fish ruler and confirmed bear-resistant by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, it’s perfect for back-country adventures. Not to mention, it has a built-in bottle ozark trail cooler opener and four drink holders on the lid, so you can have a good time no matter the temperature. Well, evidently, the Ozark Trail Vs Yeti is an impossible solve, right?
These coolers are available in 26-quart, 52-quart, and 73-quart and fall somewhere in the intermediate to lower premium price tier. The hard-sided coolers are designed to try to compete with the top-tier of the premium cooler world. You may be familiar with brands like Yeti, RTIC, Engel and Pelican which are all big names in the cooler space. Each of these companies ozark trail chair make their own soft sided coolers and the Ozark Trail is Walmart’s attempt to compete with these and sell their own brand. For a cooler of more manageable size and only $97.00, the Ozark Trail 35-quart hard sided cooler is a great choice. Its premium insulation makes for impressive ice retention, and the freezer-grade gasket is removable for quick cleanup.
There are orange accents on the latches and handles which definitely give them a premium look. In terms of color options, however, you only get silver and white. Everything from their bucket to their cargo box to their coolers are made super tough and their soft sided coolers are no exception to this. The Ozark Trail Soft Cooler lineup is a solid contribution to this ever-growing company.
Here’s our take on the Ozark Trail 26 Quart Cooler which we think is perfect for van life. One of the best selling points (pun intended) of Ozark Trail Coolers is their great asking price. You will find that nearly every model is extremely affordable. This is a big reason why this company has been so popular over the past few years and it makes it easier to overlook any issues that we may have with them.
I don’t want any cooler water intermittently leaking and leaving food smells. The other downside to the Ozark Trail cooler is that it weighs 31 pounds empty. It’s definitely heavier than its more expensive friends on the market. The coolers remained in the same location for the duration of the 6 day test, only being opened to snap daily progress pictures. The Pelican also features a different pull handle than the Yeti and Ozark coolers as well.
I have to say that I am very impressed with the performance of the Ozark Trail 45Q cooler. This cooler is not only smaller in its overall size but also a fraction of the price of the competition. We think this is one of the best coolers for camper van life.
However in real world tests it does seem that Yeti consistently outperforms the Ozark by a fair margin. As you can see the Yeti line of coolers are SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than the Ozark Trail line of coolers. REI had a member sale over Memorial Day weekend and we were able to save 20% on our cooler. We still spent more money than I’d like but at least we saved 20%. Just as with the other cooler test, we purchased four bags of ice and put the Coleman and YETI Tundra 65 in a head-to-head test.