The Pelican 50-quart Elite Cooler is made for life on the water. Built to be skid-resistant, it can handle choppy surf without sliding around. It opens with one hand and even sports a ruler on top, with cupholders and a bottle opener. There’s a reason the Rtic Ultra-Light 52 Quart Hard Cooler is one of the most value-packed ice coolers you can buy. Stuffed with ice, it kept our sensors under 40 degrees for three days.
I use the 52-quart model every week to pick up groceries in Hawaii and drive them home. It fits easily in my trunk, and I can count on it, with a few ice packs, to keep dairy cold even after hours driving around in tropical heat. In our testing, we also found that the Ultra-Light Cooler consistently keeps ice frozen and maintains a food-safe temperature (40 °F) for up to three or four days in the shade with use.
I also placed a small weather system on the deck rail to help get a sense of how hot surface temperatures are in the area. On one of the hottest days, the remote sensor reported temperatures exceeding 107 Degrees Fahrenheit while the air temp was in the high 80’s. My own personal beverage drama every summer has really pushed me to do this review.
The walls of the RTIC Soft Pack Cooler are also a touch thicker than those of the Yeti Hopper Flip. Head-to-head, all that extra insulation seems to give the Soft Pack Cooler an insulating edge, though the difference in daily use remains marginal. The Yeti Tundra Haul Wheeled Cooler pairs the indestructible nature of a roto-molded cooler with top-of-the-line handles and wheels for moving around with ease. The handle and wheels on the Tundra Haul are the best we’ve come across.
Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time). The Yeti Hopper M20 Backpack Soft Cooler is great if you need a backpack that can last longer than any other soft cooler available. This is because, despite looking like a roto-molded cooler, the Ultra-Light series is injection-molded, which uses less plastic and results in a lighter cooler. The RTIC 52 QT Ultra-Light Cooler is our best pick for most people who want a lightweight cooler that can do it all at a decent price.
This Coleman steel-belted cooler is supposed to be able to keep ice cold for more than four days. With its hard-bodied style and blocky black logo, RTIC is clearly making a run at Yeti’s business model. Honestly, a lot of the time the decision really does come down to Rtic cooler vs. Yeti cooler. To do that, I started with a modified version of the ice retention test.
All four of these metrics include numerous tests and evaluations that inform each cooler’s score in that metric. We weighted each metric according to its overall importance to the general experience of using a soft cooler. When the metrics’ scores are totaled up, each cooler ends up with a score between 1 and 100.
It stays open and upright on its own, and it has a large zippered external pocket, as well as two large mesh water bottle pockets on either side. The REI Co-op Cool ozark cooler Trail Split Pack top flap stays open for easy loading. The top half of the bag is a normal non-insulated pocket that can be used for hiking layers or cutlery.