On a related note, comfortable shoulder straps and/or grab handles can go a long way toward maximizing portability, which we outline more in depth below. The IceMule Pro doesn’t deliver multiple days of extreme ice retention, but it’s enough to get you through a hot day. When emptied, it’s much more collapsible than stiffer softer coolers meant to retain ice for multiple days—an important feature when conserving space in a boat or on a pack. Stiffer soft coolers are not collapsible and take up the same amount of space regardless of whether they’re in use.
The competition for the Trailmate consists of rotomolded coolers with superior ice retention. When shopping for a soft cooler, always look for leak-resistant or waterproof closure. But the lack of the rigid bottom means it flops around igloo water cooler when you’re not pulling it. However, if you’re looking to spend up on a luxury soft cooler, the Yeti Hopper Flip 18 is a heavy-duty choice for holding ice. We also wanted to pick a diverse list is prices, functions, and specialties.
For example, YETI’s hard-sided Tundra series is covered with a five-year warranty compared to three for the Hopper collection. The opening style and closure system of a soft-sided cooler may not seem all that important, but we can tell you firsthand that it will have a sizable impact on both convenience and overall igloo trailmate performance. Engel’s HD30, for instance, has a fairly narrow opening that’s stiff and requires considerable effort to keep open while loading and unloading food and drinks (the welded zipper doesn’t help). When testing soft coolers, we focused on performance, capacity, and how comfortable each is to carry.
With Igloo’s soft coolers, you have plenty of choices, depending on the situation. While all of these soft coolers have a touch of black on the outside, the three main choices for colors are agama teal, blaze red and acid green. Each bag weighs less than 1 lb., and storage space ranges from six to 36 cans.
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. With better insulation, a cooler can maintain lower temperatures for longer, thus consuming less ice. That’s important, especially if you, like most people, don’t have a freezer that can produce enough ice to fill a cooler and you tend to resort to buying bags of ice from the grocery store or liquor store.
We’ve also used this cooler for nearly five years for grocery runs in Hawaii, and it’s still going strong. One charm of the RTIC 65 is its reasonable price, which allows us to be far less careful with this equipment than we are with something as expensive or desirable as a Yeti. With the Igloo IMX series of coolers to Igloo MaxCold and BMX cooler options, Igloo hard coolers make a great choice for many…