That said, if you don’t need multi-day ice retention, even a cheaper hard-sided cooler should be around for many years as well. In fact, the only concern I had was that my beer would freeze because the cooler’s internal temperature stayed at 30 degrees overnight. Not only is it effective enough for a hot summer cookout, but I’d also trust it with a week’s supply of food coleman instant tent at a campsite. Remember that I tested this cooler with three bags of ice and opened the lid every hour (during the day) to read the thermometer. More expensive coolers have their advantages, but I can’t fault the Xtreme 5’s ability to stay cold. By measuring meltwater, we can produce data that illustrates the relative performance of insulation between coolers over time.
I was getting about 2-3 days of cooler “coldness” from my Coleman 316 Series. By the end of day 3, my food items would be swimming in cold ice water. Coleman states themselves this cooler is designed to keep ice for a maximum of 3 days, in up to 90 degree weather.
The RTIC 65 has rope handles with a plastic tube for gripping and two rubber latches for holding the lid closed, mimicking the design of most other, comparable coolers. As the lid overextends, you can hear the screws ripping right out of the plastic. The lid lacks the rubber seal of so many competitors, meaning the Coleman is neither airtight nor leakproof.
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. If we’re going to talk about performance, we should talk about capacity first.
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.