Gripes aside, the RTIC is our top pick to throw on our backs for a day out in the sun. If you like the idea of a backpack and you frequent the rivers or lakes, a dry bag might be the right choice for you. Regardless of your journey ahead, the RTIC Backpack 30 is the bag that will get you there. The backpack-style soft cooler remains structurally rigid and coleman chair can accommodate just about anything you’d want to take on a picnic. The padded thick shoulder straps and the thick waist strap help disperse the weight so you won’t feel weighed down by the heavy load. Capable of fitting up to 42 cans and even an upright wine bottle, the backpack excels at maintaining its chilly temperatures for an extended period.
The Everest 2x and Mountaineer feature lower-powered burners with excellent wind protection. Butane can be more difficult to find than propane, which is widely available. And, when cooking for a group, its single burner is not as practical as a two-burner stove, but using it alongside another two-burner stove is an affordable way to have three flames at once. This stove is cheap but worthy and would be a great backup stove for a van-lifer or a stand-alone single-burner for the rest of us. If you need two burners, you might find the Coleman Cascade Classic worth the extra money.
The windscreens on the Ignite Plus and the Pinnacle Pro are also shaped to provide some extra cooking width, a detail we appreciated. Though the tumbler and lid are both dishwasher-safe, the one-piece lid has crannies where grime and gunk can build up. Deep cleaning this lid is not impossible, but it takes effort, attention to detail, and a straw-cleaning brush (to scrub the interior of the straw). Yeti offers seven regular colors, including navy, black, and white, plus a handful of rotating seasonal colors.
The cherry on top is that it weighs a mere 7.4 pounds, bag and all, making it a ridiculously lightweight option for a two-burner car-camping setup. The Mountaineer grabbed top marks in this category because it has an auto-igniter and a coleman canopy straightforward process to move from stowed away to cooking a meal. What makes this stove a league above the rest is that the regulator port is external to the stove, making it much easier to avoid smashing the delicate brass threads.
The RTIC offers a similarly simple interior that’s spacious enough to bring a ton of food with you on your hunting trip or camping adventure. Its dual drains make cleaning it a breeze, and the flexibility of this model’s rubber latches means it’s easier to open and close with a single hand than other rubber-latched models. The best powered cooler we have tested is the seriously impressive Dometic CFX3 45. It won our Editors’ Choice award in our review of the best powered coolers. It offers some of the coldest achievable temperatures and above-average insulation.