Lunches you bring to work are secure and kept cold with the Daytripper Bag, whether you’re going to work or the local park on a day off. The Nylon/Poly Blend keeps the soft cooler comfortable enough for an easy carry but tough enough to keep everything inside secure. Weights for Igloo Marine Ultra options range from 1.5 to 3 lbs., making it easy to carry over your shoulder. Color options include white and navy or gray and seafoam, emphasizing design for trips on lakes or at beaches. The thick extruded closed cell foam in the Marine Ultra will keep whatever sodas, water bottles, beer, or snacks you keep inside cold for the entire day. This also makes the cooler reliable for days at the office when you want to have your lunch outside when the sun is out.
And though its hull isn’t as stiff and impenetrable as some of the others we tested, it’s still pretty strong and well-constructed. Lastly, this model lacks the high-end look of the more premium models in our test, but that might not matter to you. All in all, this cooler performs well above its price tag, offering a strong value.
The real win for the Igloo Reactor over the Yeti is the price factor. You’re getting a premium cooler at just a fraction of the price of the Yeti (for example, the Igloo backpack options is just $119 compared to $299 for the Yeti Hopper). Overall, we are really pleased that Igloo added to its product line coolers that can directly compete with well-known designs on the market. Considering the attractive price, it seems to be a move in the right direction.
But it was minimal and basically a non-issue considering the cooler’s price and how it faired in other portions of our test. High-performance hard coolers from brands such as Yeti have raised the bar for what consumers expect (and what they expect to pay) from coolers. That shift has spilled over into the soft cooler category and has pushed quality soft coolers’ performance (and price).
igloo soft coolerThen we linked up river surf spots through Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, camping along the way. Prices at both websites range from $10 to $200, depending on what type and size you choose. 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. The cheaper Igloo, however, will not disappoint, and the money saved can be put to good use. Of course, if you’re a die-hard Yeti fan, nothing will make you happier than a Hopper, so that’s what we would advise you to get.
It weighs just over 1 pound and has padded, adjustable straps, so it’s one of the most portable options on our list. Yeti, the company behind one of our favorite tumblers, designed this Roadie cooler with pressure-injected polyurethane walls and a freezer-quality gasket to lock in the cold, according to the brand. This one can hold up to 33 cans or eight wine bottles vertically, so it’s a solid choice for picnics and barbecues — though, it also comes in two other sizes with bigger capacities. Like other options on our list, Yeti’s cooler also has nonslip feet to prevent sliding. Three of our experts recommend Coleman coolers for their reliability and reasonable pricing. Chelsea Keutmann, co-founder and fisherwoman of Sea to Shore Seafood, uses one to sell frozen fish at farmer’s markets because it’s affordable and has wheels to help transport heavier loads.
That said, we always take manufacturer-provided specs with a grain of salt, and there isn’t an established, standardized test here. If we had to generalize it, we would say that you should expect to get approximately half of the claimed ice retention time in real-world use, give or take a bit depending on your specific circumstances. When traveling with prepared food, Cheyenne Nichols, chef and owner of the catering company Finest Cravings, uses a Cambro food storage box, which is made of foam and has handles on the sides. “I prefer this type of cooler because of the transportability,” says Nichols. The Yeti Hopper Flip is a favorite among reviewers who need a portable yet effective cooler for hikes and sports.