Cooler Sizes: Shop Ice Chests By Dimensions

This cooler has many reviews and is one of the highest-rated coolers with over 80 percent giving it a 5-star rating. This is not an igloo cooler with wheels so keep that in mind when lgloo Cooler you are loading it up. It may need a couple of people to load and carry once it has all of your stuff in it. The Igloo IMX 24 is going to be your heavy-duty high-performance cooler.

The RTIC 65 weighs 36.5 pounds and measures 32 by 17 by 18 inches on the outside. Unlike several other competitors, the RTIC 65 has two drainage ports for quick igloo electric cooler cleaning and draining. RTIC also sells a 45-quart version if you need something smaller. (No injuries have been reported.) Yeti has now issued a recall.

Make sure to keep in mind that these injection-molded coolers weigh more than your non-injection counterparts. This is a large chest that can have a decent cooling ability if you get a well-assembled one. The weak hinges and handles can be a huge headache and we wish that Igloo would have upgraded these items even if it resulted in a small premium on the final product’s price. However, the price is great which makes it still neutral to soft buy in our book.

Whether it is a small cooler with wheels or a portable ice chest cooler they are going to be durable. Igloo uses high-quality products and many are made in the U.S.A. The handle and wheels make it very portable and the cooler only weighs 13.5 pounds.

This will help determine the size and how much you should spend. After we bought a little more expensive cooler we struggle buying anything else. The different latches and lids that come on your Igloo coolers can vary and they definitely make a difference. Some coolers you can lock or have very secure latches helping the cooler to stay shut. This is about as basic as a cooler as you will find from Igloo. The Igloo playmate cooler has the job of keeping your food and drink cold.

igloo ice chest

That said, we always take manufacturer-provided specs with a grain of salt, and there isn’t an established, standardized test here. If we had to generalize it, we would say that you should expect to get approximately half of the claimed ice retention time in real-world use, give or take depending on your specific circumstances. For those who don’t know, Pelican is an industry leader in tough, dependable cases for storing and protecting everything from camera equipment and laptops to guns and drones. Therefore, the jump to hard-sided coolers was a logical progression. Like the venerable YETI Roadie above, Pelican’s 20QT Elite here is a lower-capacity option for day trips on the water, strapping to the back of an ATV, and other short outings away from home.

But for camping, days at the beach, or even tailgating, a rolling cooler can be a solid choice. For those who plan to carry or move their cooler with any regularity, weight should be an important consideration. Even when empty, hard-sided options weigh anywhere from pounds for low-capacity models up to 50+ pounds for premium designs with 75+ quarts of storage. Once loaded down with ice, food, and beverages, that number skyrockets. And despite including carry handles, they’re simply too hefty to travel with for long distances.

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.