If you have a boat and bring kids or friends on the water, you know that once you leave the dock the requests for drinks start rolling in fast and furious. Sure, you can load a cooler out each morning packed with fresh ice, but it is just so much easier to cut down all that work with a cooler than can keep ice for days on end. 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.
The other downside to the Ozark Trail cooler is that it weighs 31 pounds empty. It’s definitely heavier than its more expensive friends on the market. Sunday will be the cold day of the forecast with temperatures in the lower to middle 40s. Dry air will then rule next week with no rain in the forecast and temperatures slightly above average.
I was so excited to get it home and run a test to see if it really holds ice longer than my Coleman 60 Quart Performance Wheeled Cooler. We purchased four bags of ice – two for each cooler – and got started. The Ozark Trail held ice one day longer than the Coleman and in general, ozark cooler the cooler felt cooler inside than the Coleman. Unfortunately, the deal breaker is that it intermittently leaked water from the drain spout. Prior to purchasing the cooler I had read several reviews that said this cooler collects condensation around the drain spout.
If your budget is slightly expendable and would rather buy a cooler that you would not regret later on then you’re better off with a premium Ozark Trail cooler. First on the list is the 6 can cooler with an expandable top which is your basic soft-side cooler. ozark cooler The cooler at hand is definitely small, measuring 8.5 x 7 x 9 inches & weighing around 12 ounces straight out of the box. Accordingly, the variety will help you find a better match since they offer 5 different coolers with different potentials.
The old Pelican coolers were some of the heaviest coolers with the old 35-Quart weighing in at around 33 lbs. But they have since been redesigned to be lighter and more in line with other coolers. Ozark Trail don’t have any coolers around the 40-Quart range. This issue seems more prevalent in the larger sizes, but can happen on the smaller sized cooler also. Some customers have experienced Ozark Trail coolers warping when left in the sun. More specifically the lid of the cooler seems to warp unnaturally.