Take your Coleman cooler to the next level by showcasing your business name or company logo out front. 4imprint has an in-house creative department to personalize any promotional product for better name recognition for your business or organization. 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. You could tell before the tests were run that this cooler was going to be the better performer. The competitors sport very thin walls, and that’s just not going to do much for your insulative capabilities. However, the others are much cheaper and a couple come in backpack format, if that’s your thing.
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 $219 RTIC wasn’t as spacious as expected, either, holding just 39.6 quarts of water before overflowing with the lid closed. Different types of insulation work in their own ways to minimize heat transfer into a cooler. Open- and closed-cell foams act as insulators to reduce heat conduction, while fabrics and liners, such as coated polyurethane and reflective Mylar, create a radiant barrier that reduces and reflects heat radiation. If you’re wondering what kind of foam your cooler has, a good rule of thumb is to try to squeeze the foam with your fingers. If your fingers can compress the foam more than 75%, you’re probably dealing with open-cell foam.
I suspect that one of the ways Coleman keeps costs down is by making the Xtreme 5 out of traditional injection-molded plastic rather than the insulated polyethylene you’ll see on some coolers. I’m sure it’s easier to dent this kind of material, but it looks like it will hold up well as long as you don’t abuse it. The Original is made with an exterior coleman cooler 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 paper pulp of the Recool composts easily in the backyard, and it performs basically as well as any cheap single-use cooler. Note that RTIC coolers are not IGBC (International Grizzly Bear Committee) certified. If that’s necessary for you, here’s IGBC’s list of certified bear-resistant products (PDF). We may have wished for such niceties as a dry bin or the ability to handle dry ice, like many of the other coolers in this review, but such is not in the cards for the Coleman.
But the thin, plastic lid would bow underneath someone’s weight and I knew it wasn’t doing the cooler any favors. It also has a decent gash on the exterior bottom–no idea how it happened and it hasn’t cracked the plastic, but it has definitely weakened the area. It’s also worth noting that the Coleman 316 Series Insulated Portable Cooler has also earned high praise from Yeti cooler loyalists. One impressed shopper said that it kept their food “nice and cold” on a camping trip and noted that the “Coleman kept up pretty well” with the Yeti cooler they also packed.
A. All Coleman coolers are easily cleaned with warm water, mild soap and a towel. A cooler that rolls along behind you is a sensible upgrade for anyone who hates carrying things, and at $45, the Coleman Xtreme Wheeled Cooler will get the job done. It isn’t the sturdiest piece of plastic I’ve ever lugged around, but it kept things colder for longer than its closest rival, the Igloo Latitude Rolling Cooler. The performance of Magellan’s largest offering was very close to Cabela’s Polar Cap Equalizer. The lowest temperature recorded between the two in our cooling tests was less than a degree apart (44.6 vs. 45.5 degrees Fahrenheit). If your main use is for keeping things cold, then the question is whether or not that extra 0.9 degrees is worth paying another hundred bucks for.
That said, finding the best cooler for your needs is complicated by a crowded field, with a list of options that’s grown steadily in recent years. Chief among them are a rising number of heavy-duty, roto-molded coolers that deliver thick, dense insulation superior to traditional coolers (and which perform leaps-and-bounds better than a soft cooler or cooler bag). According to our testing, over a long enough period of time, a cooler with closed-cell foam will keep things cool for longer.
Another example came up last year during a power outage, as one of our staff members was able to store most of the contents of a fridge in a 70-quart cooler, along with the necessary ice to keep it cold. We’ve tested Polar Bear coolers for seven years now, buying them or receiving test units from Polar Bear. Recently, however, we’ve been let down by the lifespan of its soft coolers (though not this backpack in particular). But with care, you can extend the lifespan of any soft cooler—the number one rule seems to be not to leave it out in the sun.
Though some ice chest 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 or soda 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 75-quart cooler like the Frosted Frog has a bigger job on its hands than the 45-quart coleman camping chair RTIC. With better insulation, a cooler can maintain lower temperatures for longer, thus consuming less ice. That’s important, especially if you, like most people, don’t have a freezer that can produce enough ice to fill a cooler and you tend to resort to buying bags of ice from the grocery store or liquor store. Beware, the narrow plastic handles tend to dig uncomfortably into the bent fingers of whoever takes this cooler for a stroll.
Like you, I have to find some kind of middle ground between affordability and performance. I sampled one of the beers to verify that it, too, was pleasantly chilled, which it was. Is the Coleman Xtreme 5 cooler a high-value target or a cost-cutting alternative? I loaded one up with a few bags of ice and a selection of Wisconsin’s finest brews to find out. It’s all more than enough for me to recommend the healthiest possible dose of skepticism if you ever find yourself tempted to back a campaign like that with your cold hard cash.