Soft coolers are better for activities like a summertime picnic in the park or a day hike. And we always focus on providing you with long-lasting cold retention, the whole point of a cooler! Our affordable soft cooler designs are thoughtful, intuitive and reliable because we think of YOU and the ways you’ll use your cooler every day or on extended adventures.
Non-expedited orders are processed for shipment within two business days of payment verification, excluding holidays. You will receive a shipping confirmation e-mail once your order has shipped. The e-mail will provide your tracking number and link to the shipping carriers tracking page. Edibles that only need to be chilled should be placed closer to the top of the cooler. A team of editors and testers from TripSavvy and Dotdash Meredith’s food group sites like Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, The Spruce Eats, and Liquor conducted testing in our Brooklyn lab.
Closed-cell foam is also much more expensive to produce than open-cell foam. The resulting product is strong and especially rigid feeling, and typically it weighs more than 1.7 pounds per cubic foot with more than 90% of its air cells closed to one another. Closed-cell foam is also water-impermeable—so it’s an ideal material for, say, surfers’ wetsuits. This simple lunch-box-style cooler is insulated with thick closed-cell foam and made from a durable coated nylon. Similar to any other true roto-molded cooler, the RTIC 65 is practically indestructible, which makes it great for tougher outdoor environments. In our testing, the RTIC 65 kept ice frozen for 10 days with some periodic draining.
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. Other Features
A few other notable features to be on the lookout for include integrated bottle openers and vacuum ports for adding or releasing air. ICEMULE’s Classic has a similar valve system, although in this case, the process involves adding air to boost cooling capabilities and buoyancy and removing it to compress the cooler down for storage.
It has a leak-proof zipper, adjustable shoulder strap, and Molle webbing. The Orca Soft Cooler impressed us with its modular storage is and adorable whale tale zipper pulls. When we lugged this Yeti around, we liked the feel of the handles and shoulder straps. The hitch points on the front igloo trailmate allows for you to secure all sorts of gear within easy reach. The Yeti Hopper Flip 18 is one of the most expensive coolers on this list and we can see why. While putting this compact and lightweight cooler through its paces, we found every aspect to be highly engineered and durable.
To keep the weight down, this Pelican soft cooler’s insulation measures only half-an-inch thick. It kept its interior below 40°F for 27 hours—one of the lowest of any of the soft coolers we tested. A tough, reliable soft cooler can keep your food and beverages cold while you hike, take a day trip, picnic, or tailgate. Best of all, unlike a hard-sided cooler, many of the best soft coolers can be collapsed down for easy storage when not in use. Dry bags are a staple of river trips, as are heavy, bulky hard-sided coolers.