E. K. Arnold
20 de septiembre de 2024
great ice retention, solid build quality and value for money. music festival tested.
Functionally, this thing is just as good as the more expensive rotomolded coolers. It does exactly the same thing -- keep cold items cold in hot temps. It's a heavy item when loaded up but won't make your wallet lighter than it should be. You can pay a few hundred more for a more well-known name, but at more than double the current price.I took this thing to a three day music festival. Actually five days since we drove up the night before and stayed later the last day to swim in the river. I also had a non-rotomolded Rtic and a solf side insulated grocery bag. Before loading it up, I pre-cooled it and used cookie pans to make block ice. I also had heavy duty ice packs. Pre-cooling is critical to ice retention, as are the block ice and ice packs. The block ice goes on the very bottom. The ice packs go on the sides. Any frozen food should be the first layer. Then layer loose ice from a hag. Then food/drinks. Then another layer of loose ice. You can put another ice pack in the top with the included cargo net. Use a 2 to 1 food/drinks to ice ratio.Anyway i followed these instructions and hauled the cooler off to the festival which was outdoors with temps rtanging from 60F at night to 90+ during the day. The cooler was mainly kept in the shade and I actually put all the food in this one and the drinks in the Rtic. The reason to separate the food and drinks is so you dont jeep opening and closing the cooler. After a day and a half, this coler was still frosty. The block ice formed a mini glacier on the bottom of the cooler. The ice closest to the surface melted a little bit, but not nearly as much as the Rtic. I topped it off with fresh ice after two days but this may have been unnecessary. The Rtic's ice was more melted and the soft side bag was watery. I ended up not even using half of the second bag and giving the rest to a fellow camper. It really only needed a top off, and maybe not even that. There were still big chunks of ice on day 5, while the other coolers had far less ice retention.So this thing does what they say as far as ice retention. For best results, pre-cool and use block ice and ice packs. You could definitely get 6 days out of this if you arent openign and closing it all the time, and you are keeping frozen items in it.What's also nice about this is the wheels. It gets heavy when loaded. Our campsite was down on a rocky beach, and the wheels were great to have for when we did have to move it. It's also quite sturdy and can double as a bench or camping table. The handle works well and isn't flimsy. I also like the fact it came with accessories like the top netting, a basket for dry goods, and a divider/cutting board. With some other coolers, you have to buy all that stuff extra. it would be nice if the divider was itself freezable. But not having to pay extra for that was awesome.The size, 55l, was perfect for two people for 4-5 days (with a separate cooler for drinks and another for miscellaneous items and non-perishables). You maximize your ice retention by not keeping everything in one cooler that will be opened and closed a lot. And you can assign the lesser cooler to beverage duty, because drinks won't spoil and stay cold even when ice becomes sloshy. Food, on the other hand, will be rendered useless if it ends up in a pool of water.There aren't too many cons here as this is a great cooler, expecially for multi day trips. It might be overkill for a simple day at the beach or lake. But when you need serious ice retention, this is a go-to. It will of course work for a simple beach day, and you can put food in one side with ice packs and use the divider to put drinks in the other side with loose ice and ice blocks. The integrated bottle opener is nice too. Also the wheels give it an advantage over non-wheeled coolers when full. What this means is one person can move the cooler when full, and it can roll over almost any terrain. I did slightly prefer the Rtic's rubber latches. But these do lock tight and created a seal, even if they are a bit fiddly. The drain plug works well too and has a keeper.The other potential con is that it's not cheap. Rotomolding is an expensive and time-consuming process. But in this case, you do get what you pay for, without the cooler being overpriced. It outperformed the Rtic, which cost half as much, by a considerable margin. (The Rtic or a similar quality cooler, would be fine for 1-2 days in non-heatwave conditions. But if you're in the backcountry and can't replenish your ice, retention matters, big time. ) Not having to replenish your ice so frequently saves money in the long term. So, the price is really only a con if it's outside of your budget.On the other hand, if you buy this, you wont need to upgrade down the line because you cheaped it out and got a cooler with poor ice retention, becoming the laughing stock of your camping crew. I'm really not sure if there's any real benefit to the more expensive name brand as this cooler has outstanding build quality and does all the things you'd want a serious cooler to do.Bottom line is, yes, i would buy this again, especially if they made it in more colors. The red is nice, but coolers should stay away from heat-retaining colors like dark blue and black.Ver másVer menos
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