The interior is rather roomy – Coleman claims 70 quarts, and we measured it at 68, which is pretty darn close. As the cooler with some of the thinnest walls we tested, the Coleman doesn’t blow us away with an amazing insulation value. During our insulation tests, the Coleman was able to keep below 40º, for 3.7 days — which wasn’t the best. However, considering we tested all of these coolers in the harshest and warmest conditions without chilling them first, we found that this cooler is still a decent option for a weekend trip or a picnic. The Coleman 316 was a perfect fit for sliding underneath my van’s benches. It’s more of a tall, slim build and the dimensions were perfect for what I needed.
Crushed ice is the most readily available—you can find it at most gas stations and supermarkets for fairly cheap. The major draw is that it easily fills the gaps between your food and beverages, cooling them quickly and efficiently. However, crushed ice is also the fastest to melt and you’ll likely need to replace it fairly frequently. Blocks of ice, on the other hand, take much longer to melt than crushed ice. However, blocks are bulky and take up a lot of space in the cooler since they don’t conform around your food and cans. If we have enough space, our preferred method is to use both block and crushed ice together, and Yeti has more great tips here.
On the topic of wheeled coolers, the Igloo Journey Trailmate 70qt All-Terrain cooler also came with a dizzying amount of extras and features. Overall, it wasn’t quite as durable as the Rovr, but I think they’re mostly designed for different purposes. If I’m trekking into the woods for a weekend with a couple of pals, I’m going to take the Rovr, no question.
Having a cooler small enough to fit underneath the benches meant it would stay more chilled being tucked away and not take up precious living space in the van. A. There are wheeled versions of the Xtreme 5, but the one I tested did not have wheels. If that’s an important feature to you, check carefully when you place your order. The 70-liter capacity is enough room for food and drinks for several people.
Coolers with removable lids tend to be cheaper coolers that aren’t going to perform in the top percentile — with one exception I’ve found so far. Magellan Outdoors has a double-latching, double-hinged removable lid and happens to have won our picks for best small and large cooler. The easy-to-use, double-latched design means you can open the cooler from either side and, if you’d prefer, you can disengage the latches on both sides to remove the lid altogether. To do that, I started with a modified version of the ice retention test. Instead of a full load of ice in each cooler, I went with an amount of ice equivalent to 10% of each cooler’s total volume.
Companies like Yeti, Kong, and Rtic will happily charge $300 for a 70-liter cooler, so it can be hard to know what’s right for you. As long as Coleman offers the Xtreme 5 at $69.99 on sale, I have to think there are better places for your money (namely, the contents of the cooler) if your budget looks like mine. That price puts the Xtreme 5 in between the premium brands and the generic coolers that make me question their build quality. What sets the Coleman cooler apart from its counterparts is the brand’s signature TempLock FX Insulation, which offers multi-day ice retention, according to Coleman.
In addition to wheels, many coleman instant tents come with other special features, including cup holders and easy-to-use two-way handles. On top of some coolers being built for sitting, many of them are built for stacking, making them more easily accessible. Others are explicitly built for keeping your haul on-ice during a fishing trip. While most Coleman hard coolers are built with nothing more than handles, possibly making them hard to handle for one person, it also offers a few models equipped with wheels and built for rolling.
Anything smaller, and you end up carrying a lot of bag and not carrying much of anything else. There just isn’t enough room in those smaller sizes for them to be functional for anything except an individual lunch or a few drinks. Simply put, coolers are unlike most other categories of outdoor gear that may last for just for a couple seasons before needing to be replaced. This means that when you’re making the calculation of whether spending $300 or $400 on a cooler is worth it, you are getting a product that literally should last for decades.