It’s surprisingly easy to use and can come in handy for infrequent use at a bargain price. A lot goes into making a cooler, and we’re committed every step igloo soft cooler of the way. Soft cooler bags are the best for taking your own lunch to work, or keeping your leftover takeaway lunch salads cool for the trip home.
The shoulder strap is adjustable and removable in case you’re carrying small loads, and the liner is leak-resistant to keep everything outside dry. Though robust and watertight, its zipper is much easier to use and comes with zipper lubricant included, helping it to remain explicative-free. The Yeti Flip and the RTIC SoftPak also come standard with zipper lubricant that helps their zippers glide more easily, though they aren’t as smooth as the Engel. Lubricant needs to be reapplied to zippers frequently, especially in dry, hot, outdoor environments.
For road trips, you can separate daytime beverages and snacks into a soft cooler, which limits opening of the hard cooler and preserves ice. Soft cooler totes are long, slender, and streamlined against your side. However, taller coolers get trickier with access to buried items, so you have to be mindful when packing the cooler. The cooler’s multilayer insulation didn’t keep the ice very well, and the waxed canvas is stylish and soft but soaks up water and gets heavy. According to our ice retention test, this cooler is capable of holding ice for close to 45 hours.
That means there are a myriad of problems that can develop within the contents of your picnic ambitions, like soggy sandwiches and soda cans that have gone warm and unappetizing. Luckily, Igloo is a brand that knows how to fight against the head. The Original is made with an exterior 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 RTIC Soft Pack Cooler has a similar feel and look to a Yeti cooler but comes in at a more accessible cost.
Also, it’s nicely padded throughout and there’s even a built-in bottle opener. Here’s one of the more portable options, built extremely tough and ready for all kinds of mishandling while on the trail or in the boat. The mildew resistant outer layer is a nice touch if you’re like us and sometimes forget to fully clean the thing after each and every use. Front slip pocket for additional storage, Leak-resistant, easy-to-clean, antimicrobial liner. The actual shape of the hardliner cooler is pretty tame, but there is a host of color schemes available. We must admit that the strap, despite working fine, looks somewhat flimsy and many options don’t have the grip which cheapens things up a bit.
This also makes the cooler reliable for days at the office when you want to have your lunch outside when the sun is out. While reviewing these products, we went out of our way to imagine the many ways in which they may be used. We hauled these coolers around, putting them through plenty of use and abuse, and we’ve compiled what we believe is the most comprehensive review of soft coolers available. We hope that the information presented here helps you find the right cooler to fit your lifestyle. The REI Cool Haul features several webbing loops, two exterior pockets, and an internal zippered pocket to keep you organized.
That’s enough to hold plenty of ice, drinks, and food for a family of three. Anything smaller, and you end up carrying a lot of bag and not carrying much of anything else. There just isn’t enough room in those smaller sizes for them to be functional for anything except an individual lunch or a few drinks. In our testing, the Coleman Xtreme kept ice frozen for a full week , 30 igloo water cooler hours longer than the Igloo MaxCold . It measures 28.4 by 15.8 by 17.5 inches, its design incorporates bevels and angles all over the place, and it has a ruler and cup holders molded into its lid. Insulation obsessives may want to fill those cup holders with Styrofoam, but considering how well this cooler performed in our tests, doing so doesn’t seem to be all that critical.
And the wide shape allows easy access to the grub inside the cooler. According to our ice retention test, this cooler is capable of holding ice for up to 78 hours, which is what the brand claims. To put igloo trailmate the size in perspective, this cooler could fit ounce cans. While the Trooper 20 ($250) is a bit expensive, it stands out as the best soft cooler on the market, and should last for many seasons of use.