The Best Coolers: A Comprehensive Guide

As we discussed earlier, coolers can be divided into several categories based on their design and functionality. In this article, we'll dive deeper into each type of cooler and explore its unique features.

Handle and Latching Mechanisms

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One of the most important aspects to consider when buying a cooler is the handle and latching mechanism. The handle should be comfortable to grip and easy to use, while the latching mechanism should be secure and reliable. Unfortunately, some coolers have handles that are not designed with accessibility in mind.

My personal least favorite type of handle is the rubber kind found on Cabela's coolers. While it may seem like a minor issue, this type of handle can be difficult to open for people with mobility or dexterity issues. In contrast, my favorite handle and latching mechanism combination comes from Magellan Outdoors coolers. Their double hinge latches are easy to open and use, making them perfect for anyone who needs to access their cooler frequently.

Other Features to Consider

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In addition to the handle and latching mechanism, there are several other features that you should consider when buying a cooler. For example, some coolers come with rulers on top that can be used to measure fish or other items. This is particularly useful for fishermen who need to ensure they're not over- or under-measuring their catch.

Some coolers also come with cup holders in the top, which can be convenient for storing drinks. However, these can sometimes be a bit of a hassle when trying to access the cooler's contents. On the other hand, some high-end coolers like those from Frosted Frog and Magellan Outdoors come with metal reinforcement on their latches, making them more secure.

What to Look for When Buying a Cooler

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When buying a cooler, there are several things that you should consider to ensure that you're getting one that meets your needs. First and foremost, it's essential to look at the type of insulation used in the cooler. Roto-molded coolers have been shown to keep contents colder than other types of coolers.

In terms of size, it really depends on what you're planning to use the cooler for. If you'll be using it for short trips or outings, a smaller cooler may be sufficient. On the other hand, if you need something that can handle longer trips or more substantial meals, a larger cooler is likely to be a better choice.

Finally, consider features like wheels and pressure release valves. These can make a big difference in terms of convenience and functionality.

Conclusion

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In conclusion, buying a cooler is all about finding the right combination of features that meet your needs. By considering factors like handle and latching mechanisms, insulation, size, and additional features, you can ensure that you get a cooler that's perfect for you. Whether you're a seasoned outdoorsman or just looking for a convenient way to keep drinks cold, there's a cooler out there that's right for you.

And on a final note, we asked the great Steve what's cooler than being cool? The answer, of course, is ice-cold!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe last thing you want this summer is to open your cooler and find melted ice and warm beer we've done a bunch of testing to help you avoid such a tragedy here are the very best coolers you can buy we've been testing coolers for years and this batch includes some old favorites and some much requested new contenders all put through our rigorous process to find the very best one to fit your needs do you need to pay more for a fancy roto-molded model what cooler is the best overall which one offers the most bang for your buck we're gonna hop straight to the punch line and reveal our top picks then we'll give you a peek inside the labs to see how we test the temperature performance of the coolers over time as well as their usable capacity finally we'll dive deep into the features to look for when you're shopping for coolers without further ado let's crack this open our top pick overall is the cabela's polar cap equalizer this is a tank of a cooler it says it can hold 80 quarts we measured the volume at 76 but that's still a lot of space roughly 67 cans if you're going with the industry standard of two-thirds ice and one-third drinks the product page for this thing says it can keep ice cold for days guess what it can it actually held its temperature longer than any of the other 19 coolers we tested it's expensive at 350 bucks but it's got these nice latches that also feature a bottle opener it has rope handles for carrying with tabs that keep them out of the way when you're not using them molded padlock tabs and lots of insulation if money is no object and you just want performance with a capital p look no further now as a rule the bigger the cooler the more you can expect to pay but we also found that with greater real estate came better performance with coolers bigger really is better here are a few other options that are big enough to keep a woolly mammoth from overheating the magellan outdoors pro explore 75 and the frosted frog 75 quart we're going to talk more about both of these brands as we get into the smaller categories both of these models are quite good just not quite the performer of the cabela that said the frosted frog is 285 and the magellan is 250. if you want to save money and still get a great large cooler both are awesome options the top performing mid-sized cooler is the yeti tundra hall with a whopping 400 price tag at 56 quarts both in the listed specs and according to our measurements it fits into our medium sized category you're paying more for the name yeti is a really popular brand right now thankfully it did hold up to our testing it kept its cool for much longer than the similarly sized competition it doesn't even have much in the way of features other than these rugged wheels but if you want pure roto-molded performance in a more compact frame it's really good honorable mentions in this category of middle children go to the orca 40. it's roto-molded measures at close to its spec volume of 39.5 quarts still pricey at 320 dollars but rugged design and great performance and the 45 quart arctic also did well in our tests it only had a measured volume of 39.6 but solid performance and a much more reasonable 220 dollars in fact the 220 dollar price tag for a medium-sized cooler with great performance makes this arctic cooler our top bang for your buck pick of the bunch our favorite small cooler is the magellan 20 quart icebox i told you we were coming back to this brand this magellan has easy to use latches on either side of the cooler it has a built-in bottle opener a metallic locking system and you can get roto-molded goodness from it without breaking the bank it's only 120 bucks and its 20 quart capacity is still enough to hold 18 games and yes i know magellan is the store brand for academy sports that makes its regularly awesome performance that much more impressive the frosted frog 20 quart also tested really well it's a little more at 150 and according to our measurements it can only hold 17 cans but frosted frog just offers such a cool range of designs this brand was actually the one you all requested the most when we reviewed coolers previously you all like frosted frog i guess and i can see why it's good it performed well across the board it just didn't win any of our categories but it's rugged it has a cutting board top with a ruler on there it's a good cooler to bring along with you if you want to go fishing we tested soft-sided coolers too and they generally didn't fare very well but if you only need to keep something cool for a couple of hours they can do the trick again magellan shined as its 80 dollar model was far and away the best the life wit backpack did okay too if you want one shaped like a pack and it's only 28 bucks and yeah we mentioned magellan a lot this store brand really impressed us because stack all three of the models we tested together 450 versus one yeti 400 yes yeti is good but it's nice when the underdogs hold their own okay now that you know which coolers we picked we're going to show you how we picked them this is our test lab we've got temperature and humidity controls we've got these containers with a mix of anti-freeze and water we've got loads of thermocouples some ice and machines to collect all the data we start by testing the volume of the cooler by filling it to the brim with water and then measuring how much water we used we do this because most coolers have a slight difference positive or negative between the specified volume and how much it can actually fit due to insulation or shape we want to know how much you can fit exactly then we fill the cooler with 10 percent of this observed volume in crushed ice we take our anti-freeze mix which is propylene glycol and water if you're feeling fancy and we put it into the cooler at the exact midpoint both from left to right and top to bottom we don't want the temp of the ice we want to see how well the air in the cooler holds over time and how cold it can keep this liquid we ran the big coolers for a full 72 hours but we only needed 48 to capture the full curve from the rest of the field these tests were developed by this man steve conaway who designs all of our testing and is a bonafide expert on coolers so let's get his take on the best cooler features all right let's dive in we each have a vital piece of testing equipment in hand we're surrounded by test subjects that are each working hard to keep the rest of our testing equipment in tip-top shape let's talk coolers steve thanks for joining me tell me what are some of the features that stood out to you the most about these coolers well number one on a lot of people's lists would probably be bottle openers i'm not really sure why bottle openers are not a standard feature on all coolers at this point but many of them do have them you'll see them built into the sides or the front of the coolers those are pretty easy to find sometimes they can be a little harder to find even right here in the locking mechanism that's pretty neat yeah usually that'll be tucked in underneath the lid there uh sometimes the soft sided backpack coolers will have them attached to the straps or then you can see like on the cabela's there the latching handle there the rubber handle will have a bottle opener actually built into it right in the middle with the bottle opener built in this is has to be your favorite handle of the bunch right well actually it's not my favorite or latching mechanism oh i use the wrong term that's right the handles are here and that's its own thing but your latching mechanisms are where you really start to see them differentiate right yeah and i have pretty strong opinions about this cabela's this type of cooler like a lot of the the bigger coolers actually has my least favorite type of handle and latching mechanism there it's the rubber kind of like the bungee strap option there on the front the reason i'm not a huge fan of this there's a lot of people who actually cannot operate this very easily younger people older people uh even if you have like an injury to your arm it could be difficult to open so the fact that it's relatively easy for me a a modern adonis is is irrelevant to the point but it's completely irrelevant uh trust me yeah so my favorite uh latching mechanism here exists on the magellan outdoors coolers they have the double hinge latches now what this means basically is that you have these very easy to open latches on one side of the cooler that allows you to open it and then also doubles as a hinge on the other side the exact same thing exists so you can open it there you can even do both of them at the same time to take the lid completely off this is my favorite one by far originally we thought maybe there would be some issues with sealing and keeping the cold temperatures but our tests have shown that it keeps it just as cold as anything else nice okay so talk to me about some of these other things i noticed that frosted frog has like a ruler here and you can use the lids of some of these as a cutting board sure yeah a lot of these are geared towards outdoor people so you're going to see the rulers on top are going to be a lot for fishermen say they can measure fish and same thing you can use the tops of these as cutting boards so you can you know descale or prep your your fish and things like that a lot of them do have i'm not super crazy about this a lot of them do have these cup holders in the top which is you know great until you need to actually get inside the cooler and then it's kind of inconvenient a little bit yeah but i do like the metal here that doubles as the bottle opener hopes to keep it that much more secure right yeah you have a lot of these locks some of them are going to be plastic only a lot of them like the frosted frog some of the higher end names are going to have the metal reinforcement which will help you keep your your stuff secure okay so those are sort of the high-end stuff what should people be looking for on a like really basic level to make sure they're getting a cooler that they actually like well i mean it depends on what you're looking for number one what we've seen over the years is the roto-molded style coolers are just going to keep everything colder okay like across the board they perform better they do uh in almost every single case that we've seen that's it so at that point in time it really is about what you're using it for like i said so if you're going to be trekking into the woods you might be looking at something like the the yeti tundra hall here that has the wheels um if you're just going for a day at the beach you might want something lighter and they all have these right to release the water a lot of standard features where you're going to have the drain plugs and things like that a couple of them especially the larger coolers you can sometimes get these kind of air locks from internal pressure build up so they'll have these pressure release valves on the front of a couple of these coolers that's super nice because sometimes even once you manage to get the latches undone if they have the rubber latches that can still be difficult to open because of that internal pressure even for an adonis like myself yes even for you andrew okay well thank you very much steve i feel so enlightened about coolers one last question and this is an important one what's cooler than being cool do you know this is a tough riddle folks so it's no judgment on steve that he doesn't steve and he apparently didn't know but that's fine the answer is actually ice cold so that's something to keep in mind okay well thank you very much for watching please hit that thumbs up button if you enjoyed the video please also subscribe to cnet's youtube channel for more for some reason i'm helping steve out and i'm putting a link to his written buying guide in the description below as well as links to where you can find the coolers if you're ready to make a purchase thanks againthe last thing you want this summer is to open your cooler and find melted ice and warm beer we've done a bunch of testing to help you avoid such a tragedy here are the very best coolers you can buy we've been testing coolers for years and this batch includes some old favorites and some much requested new contenders all put through our rigorous process to find the very best one to fit your needs do you need to pay more for a fancy roto-molded model what cooler is the best overall which one offers the most bang for your buck we're gonna hop straight to the punch line and reveal our top picks then we'll give you a peek inside the labs to see how we test the temperature performance of the coolers over time as well as their usable capacity finally we'll dive deep into the features to look for when you're shopping for coolers without further ado let's crack this open our top pick overall is the cabela's polar cap equalizer this is a tank of a cooler it says it can hold 80 quarts we measured the volume at 76 but that's still a lot of space roughly 67 cans if you're going with the industry standard of two-thirds ice and one-third drinks the product page for this thing says it can keep ice cold for days guess what it can it actually held its temperature longer than any of the other 19 coolers we tested it's expensive at 350 bucks but it's got these nice latches that also feature a bottle opener it has rope handles for carrying with tabs that keep them out of the way when you're not using them molded padlock tabs and lots of insulation if money is no object and you just want performance with a capital p look no further now as a rule the bigger the cooler the more you can expect to pay but we also found that with greater real estate came better performance with coolers bigger really is better here are a few other options that are big enough to keep a woolly mammoth from overheating the magellan outdoors pro explore 75 and the frosted frog 75 quart we're going to talk more about both of these brands as we get into the smaller categories both of these models are quite good just not quite the performer of the cabela that said the frosted frog is 285 and the magellan is 250. if you want to save money and still get a great large cooler both are awesome options the top performing mid-sized cooler is the yeti tundra hall with a whopping 400 price tag at 56 quarts both in the listed specs and according to our measurements it fits into our medium sized category you're paying more for the name yeti is a really popular brand right now thankfully it did hold up to our testing it kept its cool for much longer than the similarly sized competition it doesn't even have much in the way of features other than these rugged wheels but if you want pure roto-molded performance in a more compact frame it's really good honorable mentions in this category of middle children go to the orca 40. it's roto-molded measures at close to its spec volume of 39.5 quarts still pricey at 320 dollars but rugged design and great performance and the 45 quart arctic also did well in our tests it only had a measured volume of 39.6 but solid performance and a much more reasonable 220 dollars in fact the 220 dollar price tag for a medium-sized cooler with great performance makes this arctic cooler our top bang for your buck pick of the bunch our favorite small cooler is the magellan 20 quart icebox i told you we were coming back to this brand this magellan has easy to use latches on either side of the cooler it has a built-in bottle opener a metallic locking system and you can get roto-molded goodness from it without breaking the bank it's only 120 bucks and its 20 quart capacity is still enough to hold 18 games and yes i know magellan is the store brand for academy sports that makes its regularly awesome performance that much more impressive the frosted frog 20 quart also tested really well it's a little more at 150 and according to our measurements it can only hold 17 cans but frosted frog just offers such a cool range of designs this brand was actually the one you all requested the most when we reviewed coolers previously you all like frosted frog i guess and i can see why it's good it performed well across the board it just didn't win any of our categories but it's rugged it has a cutting board top with a ruler on there it's a good cooler to bring along with you if you want to go fishing we tested soft-sided coolers too and they generally didn't fare very well but if you only need to keep something cool for a couple of hours they can do the trick again magellan shined as its 80 dollar model was far and away the best the life wit backpack did okay too if you want one shaped like a pack and it's only 28 bucks and yeah we mentioned magellan a lot this store brand really impressed us because stack all three of the models we tested together 450 versus one yeti 400 yes yeti is good but it's nice when the underdogs hold their own okay now that you know which coolers we picked we're going to show you how we picked them this is our test lab we've got temperature and humidity controls we've got these containers with a mix of anti-freeze and water we've got loads of thermocouples some ice and machines to collect all the data we start by testing the volume of the cooler by filling it to the brim with water and then measuring how much water we used we do this because most coolers have a slight difference positive or negative between the specified volume and how much it can actually fit due to insulation or shape we want to know how much you can fit exactly then we fill the cooler with 10 percent of this observed volume in crushed ice we take our anti-freeze mix which is propylene glycol and water if you're feeling fancy and we put it into the cooler at the exact midpoint both from left to right and top to bottom we don't want the temp of the ice we want to see how well the air in the cooler holds over time and how cold it can keep this liquid we ran the big coolers for a full 72 hours but we only needed 48 to capture the full curve from the rest of the field these tests were developed by this man steve conaway who designs all of our testing and is a bonafide expert on coolers so let's get his take on the best cooler features all right let's dive in we each have a vital piece of testing equipment in hand we're surrounded by test subjects that are each working hard to keep the rest of our testing equipment in tip-top shape let's talk coolers steve thanks for joining me tell me what are some of the features that stood out to you the most about these coolers well number one on a lot of people's lists would probably be bottle openers i'm not really sure why bottle openers are not a standard feature on all coolers at this point but many of them do have them you'll see them built into the sides or the front of the coolers those are pretty easy to find sometimes they can be a little harder to find even right here in the locking mechanism that's pretty neat yeah usually that'll be tucked in underneath the lid there uh sometimes the soft sided backpack coolers will have them attached to the straps or then you can see like on the cabela's there the latching handle there the rubber handle will have a bottle opener actually built into it right in the middle with the bottle opener built in this is has to be your favorite handle of the bunch right well actually it's not my favorite or latching mechanism oh i use the wrong term that's right the handles are here and that's its own thing but your latching mechanisms are where you really start to see them differentiate right yeah and i have pretty strong opinions about this cabela's this type of cooler like a lot of the the bigger coolers actually has my least favorite type of handle and latching mechanism there it's the rubber kind of like the bungee strap option there on the front the reason i'm not a huge fan of this there's a lot of people who actually cannot operate this very easily younger people older people uh even if you have like an injury to your arm it could be difficult to open so the fact that it's relatively easy for me a a modern adonis is is irrelevant to the point but it's completely irrelevant uh trust me yeah so my favorite uh latching mechanism here exists on the magellan outdoors coolers they have the double hinge latches now what this means basically is that you have these very easy to open latches on one side of the cooler that allows you to open it and then also doubles as a hinge on the other side the exact same thing exists so you can open it there you can even do both of them at the same time to take the lid completely off this is my favorite one by far originally we thought maybe there would be some issues with sealing and keeping the cold temperatures but our tests have shown that it keeps it just as cold as anything else nice okay so talk to me about some of these other things i noticed that frosted frog has like a ruler here and you can use the lids of some of these as a cutting board sure yeah a lot of these are geared towards outdoor people so you're going to see the rulers on top are going to be a lot for fishermen say they can measure fish and same thing you can use the tops of these as cutting boards so you can you know descale or prep your your fish and things like that a lot of them do have i'm not super crazy about this a lot of them do have these cup holders in the top which is you know great until you need to actually get inside the cooler and then it's kind of inconvenient a little bit yeah but i do like the metal here that doubles as the bottle opener hopes to keep it that much more secure right yeah you have a lot of these locks some of them are going to be plastic only a lot of them like the frosted frog some of the higher end names are going to have the metal reinforcement which will help you keep your your stuff secure okay so those are sort of the high-end stuff what should people be looking for on a like really basic level to make sure they're getting a cooler that they actually like well i mean it depends on what you're looking for number one what we've seen over the years is the roto-molded style coolers are just going to keep everything colder okay like across the board they perform better they do uh in almost every single case that we've seen that's it so at that point in time it really is about what you're using it for like i said so if you're going to be trekking into the woods you might be looking at something like the the yeti tundra hall here that has the wheels um if you're just going for a day at the beach you might want something lighter and they all have these right to release the water a lot of standard features where you're going to have the drain plugs and things like that a couple of them especially the larger coolers you can sometimes get these kind of air locks from internal pressure build up so they'll have these pressure release valves on the front of a couple of these coolers that's super nice because sometimes even once you manage to get the latches undone if they have the rubber latches that can still be difficult to open because of that internal pressure even for an adonis like myself yes even for you andrew okay well thank you very much steve i feel so enlightened about coolers one last question and this is an important one what's cooler than being cool do you know this is a tough riddle folks so it's no judgment on steve that he doesn't steve and he apparently didn't know but that's fine the answer is actually ice cold so that's something to keep in mind okay well thank you very much for watching please hit that thumbs up button if you enjoyed the video please also subscribe to cnet's youtube channel for more for some reason i'm helping steve out and i'm putting a link to his written buying guide in the description below as well as links to where you can find the coolers if you're ready to make a purchase thanks again\n"