However, crushed ice is also the fastest to melt and you’ll likely need to replace it fairly frequently. However, blocks are bulky and take up a lot of space in the cooler since they don’t conform around your food and cans. If we have enough space, our preferred method is to use both block and crushed ice together, and YETI has more great tips here.
Of course, you can expect to pay more for those that keep your ice for longer but this extra is certainly worth it if you’re planning extended trips. Seeing as this is the primary purpose of a cooler, this is something you’ll want to learn about any particular model you’re considering buying beforehand. Some will be able to keep your beers cold for a good day or two while some of the better performing coolers will be able to keep you in a good supply of cold beer for longer than a week in hot weather. These things will be able to store your food, be used to be able to carry other items via being pulled along on wheels, and most importantly, keep your precious beers sitting at just the right temperature for days on end. All of that is well and good, but what really sets the Igloo MaxCold apart is its outstanding level of performance. In my tests, I filled each cooler with 3 pounds of ice, then tracked their internal ambient temperatures on a minute-by-minute basis over 48 hours in a climate-controlled room set to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
In our testing, the Coleman Xtreme kept ice frozen for a full week (170 hours), 30 hours longer than the Igloo MaxCold (140 hours). It measures 28.4 by 15.8 by 17.5 inches, its design incorporates bevels and angles all over the place, and it has a ruler and cup holders molded into its lid. Insulation obsessives may want to fill those cup holders with Styrofoam, igloo cooler with wheels but considering how well this cooler performed in our tests, doing so doesn’t seem to be all that critical. Unlike most of the other models, the Coleman Xtreme has a channeled drain, which made draining much easier and required very little tilting on our part. The pathless terrain from your car to that perfect off-grid camp spot can be dangerous for your beer.
Now that we have talked about some of its big features, we thought we would tell you about the one that you’re likely to find even more important. This is the fact that you will be able to store a whopping 100 cans of beer in this cooler – more than enough for a solid contribution to any outdoor party that you attend. It is 80-quart so will give you ample storage space for your food and beer, mainly beer of course, as you can just pick berries or something if you get a bit peckish.
This thing is big, a bit on the expensive side, but also extremely good when it comes to performance and added features. It will keep ice for up to five days in hot weather, is pretty huge and will, therefore, store tons of food and drink, and has a bunch of handy features. Much like the other cooler with wheels from Coleman earlier on, this one will keep your food and beverages cool for up to five days in sweltering heats of up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Being 55-quart it will also allow you to store ample amounts of beer, food or whatever else you want to keep cool. This ocean blue cooler provides 60-quarts of storage which is larger than the Coleman above but due to its dimensions it actually holds a fewer amount of beer cans.