Ozark Trail is proving to be a really solid competitor for outdoor products. This cooler has a number of features that you would find on more expensive coolers and a few that you won’t find. There are a lot of roto-molded coolers on the market that are like Yeti but cheaper and many of them actually have even better ice retention than the Yeti. With a mass of test data in hand showing us just how well these things perform, I’ve gone ahead and separated the winners from the also-rans. Walmart’s answer to Yeti’s popular product is a bottle that has many similarities with the aforementioned model – it also features an easy-to-carry handle and an overall sweat-free design.
We just completed a review of the Ozark Trail Tumbler line, which is not only budget friendly but also well performing. However, if you treat it well you’ll get some good performance out of it for a tiny fraction of the price. When it comes down to it Ozark Trail is a cheaper rip-off of the Yeti Hopper series of coolers. Yeti doesn’t have any external pockets not does it have a bottle opener.
That’s all well and good, but I worried that a standard ice retention test on its own wouldn’t tell us the whole story. Sure, some coolers would probably keep the ice frozen for a lot longer than others, but using the melting point as your metric seems to disregard everything that comes before. I wanted to get a good sense of performance, not just after days but in hours, before any of the ice had even melted. To that end, I carefully filled each cooler with water to the point that closing the lid would cause some water overflow. Then I measured out the exact number of quarts each cooler could hold — important information to have when you’re dealing with large quantities of melted ice.
This is a much larger and diverse selection of products than the Ozark Trail hard-sided coolers. Also, you will find a larger variety of layouts and cooler types. For instance, you will have the small, simple coolers that are designed to hold people’s lunch for the day as well as higher-end premium coolers for those who are after longer ice life.
Rounding out the exterior is a lid that features 4 cup holders and inch notches for measuring your catch of the day. I’ll be totally honest, I was not expecting this cooler to be as nice as it was. It’s easy to get caught up in brand perception and often times very difficult to break away from what you think you know about a brand. I used the word “think” intentionally, because what I thought I knew about Ozark Trail was not correct.
Truthfully if it breaks it’s probably going to be cheaper for you to simply buy a brand new Ozark Trail cooler rather than to go through the trouble of getting it fixed. Ozark Trail coolers on the other hand are another story, they definitely aren’t known for their quality. Both coolers are packed with closed cell insulation and the thickness of the insulation seems to be comparable to each other. 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. Ozark Trail on the other hand offers a similar, but not quite as good, version without the brand name and sells for a small fraction of the price.
For example, the capacity, the size, the ranging temperature, the brand, and the price of it. The weather was in low 90s during the test, the coolers were in full ozark trail chair sun for most of the morning, and we opened them several times throughout the day. The ice melted in the Coleman in 39 hours and the Ozark Trail in 73 hours.
To be fair, my personal opinion is that all soft-sided coolers are bad choices. None of them get that cold, and they don’t hold their median temp ozark trail cooler for long at all. The prices range from $300 to $400 for the 60-, 80- and 100-quart models, and what you’re paying for is undoubtedly performance.
The final feature of this phenomenal bottle is its wide mouth – it makes cleaning easy and allows you to throw as much ice into it as you want. It’s a durable and versatile product that easily outperforms most of the competition. This tumbler is vacuum-sealed and made out of double-walled, high-grade stainless steel – in terms of construction quality, it is just as well-made as Yeti Rambler. For this, I did a bit of testing – I filled both this tumbler and the one made by Yeti with the same amount of cubed ice and left them on my kitchen counter for about 10 hours. To make it even more affordable, you can pick it up in-store and avoid shipping costs. Ozark Trail’s Premium Jumbo Tote is currently on sale for $29 at Walmart.