Most cooler manufacturers provide a “claimed ice retention” spec in their product listings (Yeti is one major brand who does not). That said, we always take manufacturer-provided specs with a grain of salt, and there isn’t an established, standardized test here. In practice, most of the claimed ice retention times feel quite inflated to us, perhaps due to extremely favorable testing conditions (storing the cooler inside with the lid closed in cool temperatures, for example).
The Arctic Titan has an oversized drain to decrease the time you spend emptying it. And if one drain isn’t enough for you, the Ultralight features two drains, one on either end. As far as coleman instant tent drains go, several products have dual-function drains, meaning there’s a hole through the shaft of the drain plug that lets water run out without having to remove the entire drain cap.
Electric coolers are expensive and only make sense if you have a generator running full-time during your camping trips. The disadvantages (other than the premium price tags) are that rotomolded coolers tend to be heavier and bulkier than other coolers. Although the handles are made of a foam that feels cheaper than the Yeti’s rubber, they were actually more comfortable to carry.
However, given these coolers’ smaller capacities, most users will be restocking the contents frequently anyway. These coolers are simply made by inserting hot plastic into coleman sundome a defined mold, given time to cool, and then removed. The process is simpler and cheaper than rotomolding and allows for greater precision because of the molded shapes.
As such, they are easy to use, lacking the stiff stubbornness of many other latches. Still, more flexible rubber might have a shorter lifespan than denser rubber, though we haven’t had an issue after using these products. The Igloo IMX 70qt is similar, with exceptionally flexible, soft, easy-to-use latches, also giving us pause about how well they’ll hold up through years of use and UV exposure. However, this is just speculation and not something we witnessed during our extensive testing. The Igloo BMX also has T-grip latches with slightly different shapes and thicknesses that both get the job done just fine.
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. We used these coolers as much as possible on our car camping trips, day trips, and cookouts for over a month to see how they held up to real-world use. We filled each cooler with 20 lbs of ice and left them outside in temperatures topping 90 degrees. After 48 hours, we measured the volume of liquid that drained out of each cooler to determine how much ice remained.