RTIC’s 52 QT Ultra-Light above offers a hard-to-beat combination of weight, capacity, and price, but its injection-molded design falls a little short of rotomolded options in all-out durability. Enter RTIC’s tougher 45 QT Hard Cooler, which represents another strong value from the brand at just $20 more than the coleman canopy Ultra-Light. In fact, at $220, it’s the cheapest rotomolded design on our list—even undercutting the diminutive Yeti Roadie 24 ($250). 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.
Some also boast drainage channels that funnel water through the opening, which is a nice touch for helping with the clean-up process. Yeti’s Roadie 24 and Pelican’s 20QT Elite are two notable exceptions that don’t come with drain plugs, which can make dumping out extra water a bit of a hassle. However, given these coolers’ smaller capacities, most users will be restocking the contents frequently anyway.
But open-cell foam’s ability to insulate greatly diminishes when it’s wet because water permeates all of the open space and acts as a conductor of heat. In open-cell foam, most bubbles (more than 50%) share walls with one another. These foams, which weigh around coleman cooler 0.5 pound per cubic foot, are light and easy to compress. As with all soft coolers, you shouldn’t leave the RTIC Soft Pack Cooler out in the sun or resting on very hot surfaces like the back of a pickup truck or on top of a picnic table for a long time.
Though it doesn’t have the same rock-solid feel that many of the rotomolded coolers have, the Coleman seemed to have no problem being an impromptu trampoline. If you treat the Coleman Xtreme nicely, you may be able to get a bit more life out of it, but if you’re rough on your gear, this cooler probably isn’t the right choice for you. The Original is made with an exterior of 840-denier UV-resistant nylon wrapped around open-cell foam. Technically less insulating than closed-cell foam, open-cell foam performs fairly well for most applications as long as the cooler isn’t left in the open sun. The Original can do exactly what you need it to do, which is to keep things cold for the day while you focus on the fun at hand. The Coleman Xtreme features replaceable hardware, whereas some of the company’s cheaper models don’t.
Talk to us about updating your logo for a fresh look, and you can have durable, attractive coolers that will last for years of enjoyment. Sign up here to receive the BestReviews weekly newsletter for useful advice on new products coleman canopy and noteworthy deals. We encourage you to read up on the specific benefits of a type of cooler in our full-page reviews that we do on each product to get a better idea of what you are looking at before purchasing.