This wheeled cooler has enough capacity to service a whole party. Rugged and well-insulated, this rolling cooler has the capacity your vacation needs. Even with nothing inside and a 15-pound weight on top, the Magpack holds its shape well. It used to be that if you needed a cooler, you grabbed the flimsy styrofoam option from the grocery store.
On top of that, this is one of the largest coolers we tested, fitting an impressive 48 cans, making it a solid contender to guard your food and drink for a long weekend of camping. Despite its bulky size, the Engel is more portable than we expected, featuring an easy two-person carry using the end handles. On the contrary, the premium soft coolers and particularly their hard-sided coolers have more of the traditional features we look for when we think of long ice life.
If you’re looking for a model with a waterproof zipper, check out the Yeti Hopper Flip 18. Custom built jetski mounted coolers and other watercrafts utilizing the BRP LinQ system. Depending on what you’re using the cooler for, the leaky drain spout might not be a big deal. For us, however, we keep our cooler in our car while traveling and we often camp in bear country. I don’t want any cooler water intermittently leaking and leaving food smells.
If you’re hoping to supply an afternoon picnic full of ozark cooler refreshments for everyone in your party, the Trail Pack will handle the extra weight better. Many of these coolers have handy features that add to their overall convenience. Both the Engle Roll Top and Arctic Zone Titan Zipperless come with bottle openers on the outsides of the bag, though we struggled to effectively use the one on the Titan. The Engel and IceMule models include air valves, which help eliminate excess warm air within the bag.
You can carry it like a cross-body bag, ozark cooler over the shoulder, or like a handbag with its removable strap or velcro handle. The Ripstop Oxford fabric with PU coating is also repels water, and the combination of an extra-thick PEVA liner and hot-pressed seams make it leak-proof. Though it can get wrinkled, the material is quite easy to clean.
It takes a lot of work to set and bait a trotline, and it involves some danger, as you can get entangled or hooked and pulled under by a weighted line. Have two sheathed knives on your belt to cut yourself free if you need to. If you set trotlines and run them in that deep water, DO NOT DO IT FROM A KAYAK OR SMALL CANOE. I would never ever trotline from a seventeen-foot double end canoe! Products are rigorously tested to withstand diverse and challenging outdoor conditions.
RTIC’s coolers are always the least expensive, but they aren’t certified as bear-resistant. Yeti has all the name recognition, a consistent track record, and bear-resistant certification. But in our comparisons, The Outfitter cooler is a touch cheaper per quart of space and has slightly more insulation than either the RTIC or Yeti coolers. It’s bear-resistant-certified and has the best warranty of the three brands. Plus, certain small details in the Outfitter’s shape and design make it ideal for rigging to outdoor vehicles like ATVs and rafts. The most durable coolers we tested are the Yeti Hopper M20, followed by the Yeti Flip and the RTIC Soft Pack.
While it’s not as aesthetic as some of the others on this list, it still comes in a variety of colors, and ultimately, it gets the job done. As soon as we realized the Ozark Trail was not going to work I got online and ordered an RTIC. RTIC Coolers can only be purchased from their website, which is why they say their price point is much lower than YETI. I made this purchase nine weeks prior to our vacation and the cooler is scheduled to arrive only days before we leave. That’s a little closer than I’d like but we need a better cooler.
Temperature, how many times the cooler is opened, whether or not the cooler was pre-cooled, the type of ice being used, the type of insulation in the cooler, ect. If you’re on the fence about spending the money, consider how long you will be gone and what it would cost to add ice to your cooler everyday. For us, while a YETI required a larger initial investment, we will save money (and use less water) over time.
For most people, being able to keep ice for 3 days or more is plenty. And it makes Ozark Trail Coolers great for any weekend outing. But you can anticipate the walls to be between 2.5” and 3” thick.