Our testers noticed a bit of a leak from the roll-top closure when inverting the cooler. It also has the added benefit (significant on the water) of making the bag float. Most soft coolers focus on toting cans and measure their capacities in can increments. However, the RovR KeepR focuses on mixology with an open-top bar cart soft cooler designed to mix drinks away from home, whether at camp, on the beach, or on a boat. Unlike most soft coolers, the KeepR is more of a cocktail caddy built around the IceR double-wall stainless steel ice bucket.
The eco-friendly design features a recycled polyester upper and recycled nylon bottom. 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. igloo trailmate Delivery cutoff times and shipping fees vary based on delivery postal code. Customers will be notified when the order has shipped, and provided an estimated delivery time & date. In order to serve you products that fit, we need some information about your vehicle.
Coolers like the OtterBox Trooper 20 Cooler with a broad, flat surface that rests against you can help absorb that swing and bounce. Even the heaviest soft cooler in our guide is lighter than a hard cooler. For comparison, the YETI Tundra 45 Cooler weighs 23 pounds, and the RovR Products RollR 45 weighs more than 37 pounds. We also performed a controlled in-house ice retention test to verify brand claims. For the experiment, we filled each pre-cooled cooler approximately 70% with fresh, frozen cubed ice and set them in a shaded, dry indoor space at a steady average of 65 degrees. We took the aesthetic Fishpond Blizzard Soft Cooler ($100) out fly fishing with two anglers.
In our lab, the temperature inside the tote actually dropped 8 degrees between two hours and 24 hours after filling it with ice. Cooler bags may come with basic handles or straps that make them easy to carry across the shoulder. Smaller soft cooler bags come in backpack-style designs suitable for rigorous activities like hiking, jogging or lengthy outdoor outings.
The compact cooler was full of brews, sparkling water, and lunch food. We really liked the touch of the side rope handles — they’re smooth, tough, and easy to grab and hold. When we picked up the cooler with the detachable shoulder igloo water cooler strap — which is padded — the attachment point completely broke within 20 seconds — thankfully, the cooler didn’t land on our toes. So we used a different shoulder strap to carry the cooler on our 15-minute walk to our picnic spot.
Its High-Performance Leak Proof Soft Cooler is an excellent value as it aced many portions of our test and is one of the least expensive coolers we tested. Although we could only fit 30 cans in this 42-can cooler with ice, the thick and durable insulation kept our drinks cold for many hours. The most durable coolers we tested are the RTIC Soft Pack, RovR TravelR, and Yeti Flip. These models feature incredibly tough, wear-resistant outer fabric, durable components, sturdy zippers, reinforced stitching, and a design made to be used and abused. Even after several years of regular use, they work just as well as when they were new and still look nearly as nice.
Field use takes place in various environments, from hot desert hikes to road trips from muggy Minnesota to sunny California, for a well-rounded set of conditions. All this adds up to a comprehensive review, which will thoroughly equip you to make a well-suited soft cooler purchase. Carhartt’s take on the soft cooler is this dual-compartment backpack. The lower section is insulated for keeping drinks and perishable items cold, the upper portion is meant to hold anything else you want to bring along, and there’s a front zipper pocket for small items. You could technically fit 24 cans if you put them in both compartments and didn’t add any ice.
Now, various closure solutions continue to impress us with their ability to keep things chilled. Models with the now old-school approach of having a water/airproof zipper include the Engel HD30, RTIC SoftPak, RovR TravlR 30, and Yeti Hopper Flip. Before we started timing how long our drinks stayed cold, this review began with market research into which soft coolers are even worth testing.
In an interesting twist, the Arctic Zone Titan Deep Freeze has neither a zipper nor a roll-top — it’s not even fully sealed. It closes like an old-school hard cooler, with a plastic lid that nestles snugly into the top of its plastic body. Despite not igloo trailmate being airtight or leakproof, it managed to hold ice for 40 hours during our testing. Other coolers have more traditional zippers that aren’t watertight yet still provide effective insulation, like the RTIC Backpack, REI Pack Away, and AO 24 Pack.