Best coolers of 2021: Cabela, Igloo, Yeti, Coleman and more – CNET [CNET]

Having a decent and dependable cooler becomes an essential tool during the summer, when you’re probably planning barbecues, backyard get-togethers or even an epic camping trip. But how can you hone in on the best cooler for your needs when there are so many choices on the market?

The list of options has grown steadily in recent years. Chief among them are a growing number of heavy-duty, roto-molded coolers that deliver thick, dense insulation superior to traditional coolers (and they perform better by leaps and bounds than a soft cooler or cooler bag). Keep shopping and you’ll find coolers on wheels, thermoelectric coolers, coolers with power, even a cooler backpack or two — truly coolers as far as the eye can see. If that sounds a little daunting, never fear. The entire point of this list is to make finding a premium cooler easier for you.

Over the past four years, we’ve tested dozens of coolers, 24 of which are still commercially available as of this writing. I’ve broken them down into three size categories. The small or personal sized coolers advertise internal volumes of less than 45 quarts (that’s 11.25 gallons or 42.6 liters). Midsize coolers, where most of your top options seem to land, range between 45 and 59 quarts. The largest “party” coolers boast volumes over 60 quarts (15 gallons or 56.8 liters).

Is bigger always better? Are the more expensive coolers actually worth their asking prices? And can any of the cheaper models keep up?

That’s what I wanted to know, so I grabbed the usual suspects — Rubbermaid, Coleman, Orca, Igloo, Rovr, Yeti, Pelican, RTIC, Cabela’s and more — and lugged their most popular models into the CNET Home test lab. My mission? Find the best coolers of the bunch, and categorize them in a way that will make it easy for you to find the perfect cooler for your needs. 

After several weeks of hands-on testing and countless ambient temperature readings (of course things like the inclusion of a cup holder or bottle opener is important, but the most critical thing a quality cooler does is keep your cold drinks cold), I’ve separated the winners from the also-rans. Here’s everything I learned, starting with the coolers I think you should rush out and buy before your next camping trip or big family gathering. I’ll update this list periodically.

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What we’ve tested

These coolers are currently commercially available from the dozens we’ve tested over the last few years. Here’s a linked list with brief insights:

• Bison Gen 2 Cooler (50 quarts): The higher price tag will get you the coldest temp in its category, but inability to maintain that temp keeps this ice cooler from the winner’s circle. 
• Cabela’s Polar Cap Equalizer Cooler (60 quarts): One of the most expensive coolers on the list, but that’s the price you pay for “best large cooler.”
• Yeti Tundra 45 Cooler (33 quarts): Lowest temp reached in the small cooler division, but its price tag keeps it from top pick.
• Rubbermaid Ice Chest Cooler (48 quarts): Lowest temperature performance in midsized coolers.
• Coleman Xtreme Marine Cooler (70 quarts): Tons of capacity in this cooler, and for less than $60!
• Coleman Xtreme Wheeled Cooler (50 quarts): Fairly poor stats in the midsized cooler performance tests, but less than $70.
• RTIC 65 Cooler (65 quarts): Middle of the pack performance with a slightly higher than median price tag. 
• Igloo Island Breeze Cooler (48 quarts): Low cost at $37, but second to lowest performance scores in its division.
• Igloo Latitude Wheeled Cooler (60 quarts): Large, but lowest performance scores in its division.
• Igloo MaxCold Cooler (50 quarts): Some of the best scores in the midsize cooler division, and an attractive price tag.
• Rovr Rollr 60 Wheeled Cooler (60 quarts): Holds temp well, just maybe not as cold as its competitors. Highest price tag we’ve tested. 
• Lifetime High Performance Cooler (55 quarts): One of the better performing midsized cooler, and a deal at just over $100.
• Orca Classic Cooler (58 quarts): Best midsized cooler for a reason, but the price to pay is steep.
• Pelican Elite Cooler (50 quarts): Gets colder than most, but won’t hold it as long as others. 
• Yeti Roadie 24 Cooler (20 quarts): Middle of the road performance. Picks a temp and holds it well. 
• Yeti Hopper Backflip 24 Insulated Backpack Cooler (22 quarts): It is a backpack, but most any other cooler will perform better. 
• Coleman Portable Cooler (16 quarts): Cheapest option at only $23, but isn’t going to hold its temp for very long.
• Magellan Outdoors IceBox Dual Open Hard Sided 20 qt Cooler (20 quarts): Best small cooler, reasonably priced, excellent features and performance. 
• Pelican 20 Quart Elite Cooler (20 quarts): Not a strong competitor in comparison. 
• Coleman 24-Can Party Stacker Portable Cooler (23 quarts): Gets super cold, but doesn’t stay that way for long; only $30.
• Rubbermaid 45 Qt. Blue Wheeled Cooler (45 quarts): Median performance, but it’s only $33, and on wheels!
• Xspec 60 Quart Roto Molded High Performance Cooler (60 quarts): Our best overall cooler at $270. Top-notch features and performance.
• Igloo Trailmate Journey 70 qt. All-Terrain Cooler (70 quarts): Feature-rich and excellent performance. Just above median price tag.
• Everbilt High-Performance Cooler in Gray with Lockable Lid (73 quarts): Subpar performance in large coolers. 

How we tested them

Ice retention

The big differentiator that you’ll hear a lot about as you shop for a cooler is ice retention — specifically, how long a cooler can keep a full load of ice frozen (melted ice, aka water, isn’t as good at keeping drinks cold). The new, expensive options all hang their hat on this test, with rotomolded coolers specifically designed to ace it (and in doing so, justify their price tags).

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 days in, but hours in, before any of the ice had even melted at all.

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 just 3 pounds — not even half of a small bag from the gas station. Less ice meant more of a challenge for the coolers, which would hopefully give us a more granular look at how well they perform relative to one another. 

Specifically, I wanted to track the ambient temperature in each cooler, so I spread the ice in each one I tested beneath an elevated jar of propylene glycol solution (watered-down antifreeze) with a temperature probe in it. Why elevated? The temperature down in the ice would have been roughly the same in all of the coolers, leaving retention as the only real variable. Tracking the ambient temperature up above it was much more telling, and it gave us some additional variables to consider.

Which cooler gets the coldest? The results are in

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Oh, and I did all of this in one of our appliance lab’s climate-controlled test chambers, and I made sure to let each cooler sit open in the room for several hours beforehand in order to ensure that they all started at room temperature (about 70 degrees F).

In the end, it turned out to be a fruitful test. After 48 hours, I had a nifty graph showing me the temperature inside each cooler on a minute-by-minute basis — and the difference from cooler to cooler was striking. To help put this data in perspective, I did break down the coolers into separate size categories since the effect of 3 pounds of ice on a 20-quart cooler would look different than on a 70-quart cooler. That left me with small coolers (less than 45 quarts), midsize coolers (45-59 quarts), and large coolers (60 quarts or more). 

Capacity considerations

If we’re going to talk about performance, we have to talk about capacity, too. Though some sizes are more popular than others (50-quart, for instance), there really isn’t much uniformity among coolers as far as size and shape are concerned. Apart from determining how many cans of beer each one will hold, size and shape will obviously have an impact on performance, too. After all, with the quantity of ice being equal, a 70-quart cooler like the Coleman Xtreme Marine Cooler has a bigger job on its hands than the 48-quart Igloo Island Breeze.

I did my best to account for those size differences as I evaluated each cooler’s relative performance, but first, I needed to be sure that I had accurate measurements. That meant putting those manufacturer capacity claims to the test, and I wanted a better, more universal metric than just counting how many cans I could cram into each one.

To that end, I carefully filled each cooler with water, measuring out the exact number of quarts each one could hold before I was no longer able to close the lid without overflowing, important information to have when you’re dealing with large quantities of melted ice. If anything, the cheaper models were mostly conservative in their estimates, with ones like the Coleman Xtreme and Igloo Latitude wheeled coolers coming in several quarts more sizable than advertised.

The expensive guys? Not quite so much. Rovr pegs the capacity of its $400 Rollr wheeled cooler at 60 quarts, but I could only fit 52.8 quarts of water inside when I measured for myself. The $300 Yeti Tundra 45 wasn’t as spacious as expected, either, holding just 38 quarts of water before overflowing with the lid closed. That’s several quarts less than the 45 quarts implied by the product name (nice try, Yeti).

That might be in part because the Yeti’s walls are considerably thicker than the other coolers’ — which, in turn, is probably a big reason why the thing performed so well. You’re getting thick insulation, but at the expense of capacity. I think that’s a reasonable trade in a hard shell cooler, but I wish Yeti were more transparent about it.

Meanwhile, for the same price, the 58-quart Orca Classic Cooler came in right on the money at 58.1 quarts measured — and while it didn’t hold its ice as long as the Yeti did, it still finished as one of our top performers. Yeti’s Hopper Backflip 24, a soft-sided backpack cooler, had the most understated volume of all coolers we’ve tested so far. Claiming space for 20 12-ounce cans at a 2:1 ice-to-can ratio for a total of 22.5 quarts, I found the internal volume to actually be 26.42 quarts, which is 117.4 percent of the stated volume (about one extra six-pack compared to other 20-quart coolers). The worst offender, offering only 86.1 percent of its claimed 70-quart capacity, was the Igloo Journey Trailmate.

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