Trying to find a good reason to buy a high end cooler.

Looking at the Pelican 70QT?

Love Pelican. They replaced a rifle case damaged by baggage handlers.

guess that depends on the circumstances. Anything useful would be too heavy to carry without a vehicle.

No.

Ozark Trail and Lifetime, are very disappointing for ice retention  

I would say no.  If you have no ice, coolers don't do much for you.  Too heavy.

That being said, I have 2 pelican coolers and they are very nice.  Very heavy.  Keeps ice for a long time.

If you want long ice holding and aren't in need of toughness.....there are cheaper coolers that will keep ice just as long that aren't as heavy as one of the pelican/etc style coolers.

I have the Ozark Trail rotomolded coolers (several of them) and I'm impressed with how long they keep ice. Definitely better than cheap coolers.

Now, you do need to precool them and the colder you get your drinks and food before placing in the cooler the longer the ice lasts. Even the grossly overpriced Yeti coolers won't keep ice for the advertised length of time if the cooler and the food and drinks aren't precooled.

There have been multiple tests comparing Yeti and others to the Ozark Trail coolers and there is little difference. For the very slight improvement the Yeti offers vs the Ozark Trail, I can buy a LOT of ice.

I've had pretty good luck with the "Extreme" 6 day coolers (Igloo?). Some tests I read indicated they worked better than the Yetis/Pelicans at the cost of durability. Since I don't abuse my coolers much, I'll take the "spend less for better performance" approach.

my 5 day Coleman cooler contained about 5# frozen meat, and 5 one gallon frozen water jugs... was not opened until the afternoon of the 6th day during the 2004 hurricane 9 day power outage...there was still some ice in the jugs... by that time I was able to get crushed ice from my work location

When you're killing zombies off  your rooftop do you really need the added worry that your beer will not be cold in 5 to 7 days?

If you're going to spend the money, spend it right.


Any of their smaller units are good too. I lived in a semi for six months with one of these, and they're easily repaired with a little googling and some common sense. A friend has a ten year old -65 model and is still ticking after a thermistor replacement.

Short term maybe. 5-10 days would be nice.
Long term? Where are you getting the ice and how are you transporting it.

For the price of that,  you could buy a small deep freeze and a generator along with fuel storage capacity and STILL spend less. Looks neat but damn that's expensive!

THIS!!

if you are trying to "survive" and are close enough to go and buy ice, I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to survive from.

Frozen foods packed in ice will last longer in a floor cooler with a top that opens up versus a standing freezer when there is no power.

To the OP, a cooler is a good thing to have on hand in an emergency situation.

Then pick the one that keep ice the longest.  So yes the high end coolers do keep ice longer.  But many tests have shown coolers like the Coleman Extreme line keep ice just as long for a fraction of the cost.

I will admit I thought the high end cooler was a why bother. I won one and gave away my Igloo Marine cooler as a result. The difference in ice retention is huge. I also have a battery pack that will run the fridge for 4 hours.

What are you comparing them to?

That doesn't match my experience so I'm curious what you are comparing the coolers to.

Also, which cooler are you using? Ozark Trail has numerous sizes and types.

Insulation value doesn't improve in a linear fashion. So doubling the insulation will always be better but you won't double the ice retention with double the insulation.

Just like with a house, you can increase the insulation but going from no insulation to some will show a bigger improvement than going from some insulation to more insulation.  But, more insulation is always better you just have to decide how much is worth paying for and where your line is.

I wouldn't pay Yeti prices but will pay Ozark Trail prices.....especially since I bought two of my three on closeout. I'm impressed with them.

Remember, in order to get close to the rated ice retention time, you MUST prechill the cooler and prechill the food/drinks. If you don't you won't get nearly the rated ice life on ANY cooler.

I think a lot of people forget this.  They throw some ice into a hot cooler with warm beers and think "this sucks for ice retention" when their ice was busy trying to cool warm drinks and a hot cooler.

You will be shocked at the ice retention results if you pre-chill the cooler and the items going into it.  Also most good coolers will actually state the best amount of ice to use for the size of the cooler/amount of food or drinks you are putting in it.

Exactly.

Alternatively, you can drop your warm stuff in, let everything get cold, then drain the water and add more ice.

Even Yeti says you MUST prechill it and place cold items in to get the rated ice life. Also, outside temps and placing a cooler in the sun will affect the ice retention regardless of cooler brand and type.

When we go camping, I freeze everything I can. What I can't freeze still gets tossed into the freezer for an hr or so before I pack the cooler. I also put the drinks in the deep freeze for a couple hrs. Doing it that way I can get a few days with cheap coolers and more than that with my rotomolded coolers.

I went through the same thought process and ended up with a Dometic mid sized frig/freezer with the ability to run it either in my truck or in my work shop with a battery bank kept charged by 100 watts worth of panels.

I have gone 5 x 24 hours on my stored power battery bank (no solar attached)

With the panel hooked up I can go as long as needed. I also have a spare panel/controller that I could take with me if I had to go mobile or if I wanted to double up on charging power.

Having said that I do have and use a mid sized Yeti. There is something about pulling a beer out of crushed ice

Maybe not a full on SHTF survival situation but more like something that can and does happen regularly like tornado, ice storm, hurricane, etc. Although I guess if ya loose power due to an ice storm then keeping stuff cold will be the least of your issues I have loaned mine out a couple times to friends that had either a power outage or fridge/freezer go out.

I like the ones made by RTIC and they usually run some nice deals for back Friday. Keep an eye on their social media sites for the flash sales. I've scored mine for nearly 50 off that way.

I'm pretty happy with my Lifetime.

I would consider a good cooler a survival item.

I’d certainly place a cooler in the emergency preparedness category, but not survival as it is not sustainable in a longer term situation.

However, the 12volt thermoelectric coolers paired with a solar or hydroelectric generator I’d place in the survival category.

I'd say it can't hurt, especially in a short term situation like an extended power outage.

I've got a HMMWV and I like running around in with it opened up in the warm weather and, found myself wanting some insulated storage for stopping at the grocery store when I'm out and about or, when I'm spending the day out on the trail. Also wanted it lockable so someone can't walk up and snag stuff out of my truck. Had been wanting to pick up a good high end cooler and decided it was time. Did my research and grabbed a brand new 65qt Pelican off Craigslist for less than half retail.

Ended up taking the Pelican on a cross country road trip and it kept ice extremely well for the week and a half. Half way through the trip, it still had 3/4 the ice we left with and that was with semi-frequent opening.

The only downside I've seen to it in the 2 years I've had it, besides cost, is that it's heavy as hell. It's almost 50lbs empty. It doesn't have wheels so completely loaded is definitely a 2 man job.

That said, it's also tough as hell. I'm a little ashamed to admit that one day I was working on my HMMWV, took the cooler out of the bed (from where I've normally got it cable locked) and set it behind the truck. For some reason I needed to move the truck and back up. Hopped in the truck and started reversing and all of the sudden it stopped and I tried to give it a little throttle. Right then I remembered the cooler was behind the truck and I was in the process of backing over it. Quickly pulled forward and was ready to find some damage but, aside from popping one of the rubber feet off and a couple scratches, thankfully found there wasn't anything wrong.

I've also got a Coleman Xtreme 150qt. It was less than half the price of the Pelican. I mostly use it for barbecues because it's huge. It does a really great job of keeping ice too. Not as long as the Pelican but 5-7 days is doable.

As was mentioned about making ice in an extended situation, I've got a standalone ice maker for that reason. It does nothing but sit there and churn out ice cubes. I've even thought about picking up a commercial ice maker but I don't really have room for one right now.

Yeti makes great products. For short term survival sure, long term, not really.

Not to start a pissing match but Yeti's handles and latches are weaksauce compared to Pelican's. Also, Pelican outperforms Yeti in keeping ice.

I was initially going to get a Yeti but after a couple days of research and comparison, I found that while Pelican doesn't have the bro following or window stickers Yeti does, their coolers are a better product.

I do like pelicans latches, but they cane out after I got the yeti. I do not get the stickers for coolers or sunglasses.

Ditto. It may not be equivalent to the $3-500 models but it’s been great for us so far.

A good cooler can save time and money; more room for food because the ice or ice packs last longer, no fear of food going bad because it got too warm, usually more durable, etc. Ours has been on a couple trips with us now and has been very worth it. It replaced a battered “5-day” Igloo that barely kept ice in the heat for a day.

Don't buy Magellan brand coolers. I bought a 70 quart at Academy. It was so heavy it was hard to move around when empty. A two man when full. When filled with pre-chilled water and soda and 30 lbs of ice added it lasted about 26 hours before needing ice again. That was under a pole barn at an HTF shoot (no direct sunlight). I gave it away.

we lost power during a blizzard a few years back, and since my parents own no generators/coolers/anything we ended up dumping our food in a snow bank. worked great except when you wanted something you had to go get it, and we didn't find it all until it was spring.

I'm in Texas now so not thinking that will be an issue. I do have a dedicated freezer and stand alone ice maker. that's nice because you just pour water in and ice comes out, low power draw and you don't need it hooked to anything like you do for a kitchen ice maker.

Already having big bottles of frozen water is nice because as soon as power goes out, your freezer becomes a cooler. Not as good as the crazy expensive ones, but still solid.

A cooler is just part of the food handling system.

The expensive ones have their places but we got along without them for a long time.

You can search "cooler hacks" and perhaps find ways to make your cheapy coolers better.  The hacks are sometimes not worth it or not going to hold up, depends on how you use your stuff.

For a vehicle or boat, sure the expensive tough coolers can make more sense.  They will handle rough abuse and unexpected accidents a lot better than the common stuff.

And at the same time, I won't be trying to cram a deep freeze worth of food into a bunch of yeti or pelican coolers cause of the dollar cost issue.

Even if I have a generator for running the deep freeze, if things go long enough I might run low on fuel or throw a rod through the block.

I like a fridge on a day to day basis, but not enough to value it for gasoline when the deep freeze could use that gasoline instead.  So fridge stuff goes into a cooler.

As mentioned the deep freeze can be used to make ice, makes it run less often as well.  As long as the proper temps are maintained I prefer large blocks of ice to a bag of little ice cubes in a cooler, nicer to remove a 2 liter of water vs. how ever many ice cubes melted and need drained out of a cooler as well.

I personally look at this the same as I look at water storage or food storage or fuel storage.

A cooler is a tool to use in the whole system.  I don't own a yeti or other expensive cooler.  I don't really use a cooler all that often for the most part.  If taking a trip I have some smaller coolers I will pack in a big cooler.  Big and bulky but it works for me.

This! Coleman extremes ftw! Hopefully putting a deer in one of mine shortly. Once everything is cool I usually add ice after 4 or 5 days when it's on our patio. $35ish

I won't get into if it's better than yeti etc, but on beach or camping tripa I've never seen a yeti outperform. The difference with my rtic is negligible. It doesn't have latches, but I've tipped mine over with roughly 30lbs in it and the lid didnt open.

Go buy a Canyon Cooler and be done with it.