I started getting back into outdoor stuff a couple years ago after not doing much of it since the 80's and 90's. I absolutely choked when I saw what coolers are going for these days. It's absurd. _Especially_ when it comes to Yeti. No thanks, I'll just get a cheap Igloo or Ozark Trail. Those work just fine for me.
well YETI is the apple of coolers. If you can afford it just fine, you will look cooler, no pun intended, and the job will get done a little bit better. If not, regular coolers are just fine, as you say.
@@Brunnen_Gee I haven't actually looked, but if Coleman is anywhere it will be at Walmart or on the web someplace. After having igloo, I'd stay away from Coleman if at all possible. I'm not really interested in upper price range coolers unless it's for something truly precious like a load of freshly caught fish or venison.
If you carry food through the desert for five days and get paid based on how good the food is...its very clear that the expensive coolers are worth it...although Yeti isn't my favorite or the most expensive
I was an insulator for yeti. Their standards are out of this world. We threw way more away than we kept when starting up at our factory. Even after we got the ball rolling we threw away a ridiculous amount because of quality control. The foam has to be perfect for the cooler to hit the shelf.
That explains the cost, which is hilarious to me because everyone I know whines about how poor the QC is for almost every product sold today. They also whine about the cost of Yeti coolers.
This! Quality matters, and price alone should not be the #1 factor when deciding what to buy. I hate that Yeti is so expensive but it's made the best. Sadly the cut open test is pointless unless you plan to analyze why the Yeti foam is working better, eg. you could weigh it, or put a heat source the other side of it (eg. a 50W light) and measure thermal conduction through the foam.
I have the Ozark Trail knock off. Packing the cooler for a campout by layering food and ice in layers worked best for me. I also don't place my cooler on the ground, instead resting it on four bricks and placing a light blanket over it to keep the sun off of it seems to help a lot to
Most definitely, wrap it as best you can when transporting an not using it, and always keep the sun off it. I will wrap up mine nicely with an old wool blanket I have, then cover that with a heavy jacket I always have in my car, to keep the sun off it. When I'm starting to use it and open it, I always just make sure to just quickly cover it with the blanket or jacket. You don't have to rich, just smart!
I just bought a $22 igloo 20qt cooler. It holds ice for more than 24 hours in summer heat (as long as it's not directly in the sunlight). Is it worth an extra 250-300 dollars just so that I can avoid putting an extra $2 bag of ice in? As for long term reliability, a rotomolded cooler would need to hold up for 10-15 times longer than my cooler to make it worth the price increase. A cooler is one of the easiest things not to beat up on. I can't imagine any normal use situation that would break a budget cooler.
if you want a small but cheap alternative to a rotomolded cooler i have had success with buying a normal plastic coleman cooler of my choosing, and doing a simple mod, just drill the inside in a few spots, inject spray foam between the plastic layers (like low expanding "great stuff" from home depot), and fill the holes with epoxy after, adding the layer of foam makes the ice last many times longer,
@@smithjohn3080 it doesnt work, because of thermal mass, there is people on youtube who have tested this a looot and it never works, because adding a bunch of foam just makes your cooler literally eat ice as the huge volume of foam you added sucks all the cold out of your ice, i'm an idiot, i dunno how to articulate the sciency bits, but just do a search, i believe they drilled a different yeti cooler, and one form like the 90's and all of them kept things cold worse than stock from the store, cuz the manufacturers have math and stuff they use to do things with but 300 for a cooler is dumb, all new coolers are a scam, i just buy them at good will for 2$ from the 80's keeps ice in it for 2 days minimum, during fall i can camp for 5 days with a 80's cooler, there is no need at all for these yeti ones. i guess unless your camping in a desert for a week or on some expedition, but in both cases you would not ever be dragging a big ass cooler around with you when you do it
@@joewoodchuck3824 If you have a gap filled with air, you can get natural convection circuit going which reduces the insulation properties when compared to still air. The inside wall is cold and the outside wall will be hot. The air touching the inside wall will cool and get dense so it will drop, the air touching the outside wall will warm reducing it's density so it will rise. Now you have hot air outside rising and cold air descending and they start a circuit. The insulation creates pockets of still air which cause the heat transfer to be more like conduction through the air. If the insulation is too dense you can get conduction through the insulation.
I like how he says it's a 45 quart cooler when in fact yeti is quite deceitful and go by "model numbers" and the 45 isn't 45 quarts. As far as I know they are the only major brand that does this and it also makes this no surprise it performs better as it is smaller on the inside than every other cooler here so with 7lb of ice it has less of a area to cool.
I have both a YETI and an RTIC cooler. Honestly most anyone would be fine with either. They are both excellent coolers and both have held ice for three days in my garage during the summer. The one plus I would give to RTIC is cost vs YETI. They run considerably cheaper than YETI, but if it performs worse than YETI it is not by a noticeable difference to most.
Do you think th RTIC would keep ice for 7days+ on a river trip like the Yeti? I've used pretty much all yetis in the past, the RTIC is super tempting due to the cost, though.
@@TheJordanicas yeah, I don't think it would be more than like a 10% difference between yeti and rtic. If they didn't have the different names on them they would feel the exact same.
i actually returned my yeti after getting a walmart Ozark Trail 45. i did my own test with 20 lbs of ice and a 12 pk. , ozark is grey and yeti was white and i set them in the direct sun last july. after 3 days the ozark trail still had ice and the yeti had no ice and the drink were not frosty, just kinda cold.
At the 8:19 mark it is clear that each of the non-Yeti coolers has a place wherein the insulation is thinner: the Igloo on the bottom and the Amazon on the lower rear wall. The Yeti appears to be consistent thickness all the way around. I would not be surprised if that is a significant factor in the difference between the performance numbers. The thin Igloo floor is especially concerning because that surface is in direct contact with the floor. In a garage the concrete would be a massive reverse heatsink warming the bottom of the coolers.
Thank you for the testing and the chopping up of these costly coolers. This really gives us great insight of how they are made although they're horribly expensive. I've been told that a decent foam cooler works almost as well.
But there's probably something that you pay an extraordinary amount of money for, that others would say you're crazy for doing so. It's all in what makes you happy.
I bought the RTIC a years back when they went down in price to $175ish and between the pinchpoints and the lack of space it’s not worth it. There was one particular time my brother and I had a bunch of dried ice food on an elk hunt that we kept back at the truck. It worked perfect for this application. The only thing is the cooler has to be able to breathe/decompress as the dry ice sublimates.
I paid $328 for my yeti and used it once, filled it up with $35 of beer and $7 in ice put it in the back of my truck drank 2 beers, went inside a fast food joint came out and my cooler was gone, so it's back to my igloo, I hope the kids that stole it get a nice big hangover.
Went camping with a friend and his wife last year. He had the Yeti and I have the Igloo, his cost almost 400 bucks and I paid 95 for mine. we both had 2 blocks of ice on the bottom and there was zero difference in ice melt after 3 days, both performed identically. Some company's will always go after the "Sucker born every minute crowd and Yeti has always been one of these company's. If you dont think so, well go buy one of their $400 cast iron fry pans.
3 days? 😂😆😆😝😆😂 I’ve been on 2 week long elk hunts with the Yeti and the Igloo and the Thermos and there’s no comparison kid! The Yeti far outperforms the Igloo and Thermos EVERY time!
This is the mentality of someone that sees a beautiful, expensive sports car and says my car is almost as fast as that one and costs a fourth of the price haha what a fool to pay for the sports car!! Meanwhile his car is a cheaply built rust bucket with bad interior and a couple windows that don’t roll down.
The key to the Yeti insulation is the thickness is uniform. Just look at the profiles of the three next to one another. The fact that the Amazon has the thickest means absolutely nothing if it still has some of the thinnest wall. You are only as good or protected as the thinnest part of your walls. The other key to the Yeti is that their latches make the lid always have a super tight seal. their cleat style latch makes you pull the lid down tight every single time you close the lid and secure it.
It funny how the other 2 had really thin bottom insulation.. do your in summer ground temp is 80 degrees and your setting g your cooler with 1 inch insulation on the warm ground.. good choice eh.
I found a perfectly good large white Yeti floating in our lake after spring freshet. It did not have any markings on it so we kept it. This thing has been through hell and back and has teeth marks on it from a enraged black bear cub that got frustrated trying to open it . They are a great product but am glad I never had to pay the price for it. Now that I own one if it were to be stolen I would gladly pay the price for a new one. We also take this cooler on our blue water sailboat as it is great for keeping our food cold while defrosting our cruising fridge and freezer. They are old school and have to be manually defrosted.
This would have been more helpful if you did a cost/performance metric. I RARELY use my cooler for more than 48 hours and when I looked at the Yeti, it's performance was great well after that time period, but the cost was very high. So take each of your performance metrics and divide it by cost, then compare (you can even weight each metric). The Yeti was 3.75 times the price of the Igloo. @50 hours the Igloo is at 38 and the Yeti is at 32. If you're using your cooler for more than 48 hours it might be worth the difference. The price/performance really depends on your individual situation.
Put wires through the seals....... Totally changes the cooler performance. Seals are critical and he nullified the most mportant thing to test. Stopping air circulation.
I wish I had something like the Yeti for the Maria hurricane aftermath; Any ice you got after a long line for hours was lost in less than12 hours, lost all perishable food in a short time.
@@sasquatchrosefarts The tiny wires through the seals made no difference it was still sealed because the seals are flexible enough to go around the wires and still seal if he would have tipped it with water inside I'm confident that the coolers with seals would not have spilled anything.
I guess the test was based purely on performance. And for that the Yeti wins hands-down. Alas, I agree, I couldn’t afford the Yeti so I bought the Woods cooler instead.
I chose RTIC over Yeti years ago. Bought (2) 45’s & (1) 65. Got a great price at the end of the lawsuit. Performance was the same, but the cost was maybe 1/3. They are great for long term temperature control, not for repeated opening to get drinks out all day. Then they perform like regular coolers.
I gotta say I'm totally impressed with the professional temperature graphs, the scientific ladder experiment, and the exceptional cooler cutting skills; as for those Camel City Mill socks, they're awesome for keeping my feet totally dry and comfortable. Love the humor.
He put wires through the seals.....it's terrible. He's a dunce. The seals are what stops air circulation. The test is totally unrepresentative of what it does with a proper seal.
@@sasquatchrosefarts Lighten up.... all the coolers were treated the same way so it all comes out even in the end. How else was he going to test the temperatures without opening the cooler? .... that would have given you something else to bitch about. Dunce.
I have an old timey Igloo cooler I bought at a discount store about 25-30 years ago for not a whole lot of money and it will keep ice for 3 days. Granted, there is not much ice left after 3 days, but the melt water is really cold. It has handles molded into the sides, so it isn't easy to move around, but it is such a good cooler I can't get rid of it. Therefore, I have no incentive to spend hundreds on a Yeti when my $10 cooler works for me. Also, as a woman, I feel those expensive coolers are WAY too heavy unloaded and would be prohibitively heavy loaded, so, still keeping my old timer.
I’ve got an older Igloo cooler from at least 15 years ago. I’m keeping the old timer too! Works great, molded handles on the side that suck lol. But most importantly, it’s got wheels and a retractable handle. Love it and it likely cost me $30 at the time
I'd be interested to see you add in the RTIC 52 Qt. Ultra-Light. It comes in at 8 lbs. less than the normal RTIC 45 Qt. as well as being cheaper so I'm curious how it performs. I'd love to see a chart of all the data from all these tests compared. I'd also like to see a price included in there too for reference. Like, yeah the YETI might be the best performer, but at 3.5x the price of the Igloo is that extra money really worth it? Overall a very interesting video tho! I'd love to see an Ozark Trail one thrown in there too!
A lot depends on if you know how to pack a cooler. Years ago I had an igloo 54 at. To pack it full of beer I'd lay the bottom full with the cans on their sides. Then I'd put a thin layer of ice on top of that and repeat the process until I had 2 cases of beer in it. I would have cold beer for 4 to 5 days . Of course it took 2 fairly strong guys to carry it.
I use a Coleman marine cooler which is fine for a few days (2-3 days or more depending on how much ice is put in). Have you ever packed your burgers, dogs, steaks, etc... in a ziplock bag only to grab it and its filled with water? What I do is to use a smaller cooler (with thin sides) and place that in the big cooler. Place whatever I do not want to get wet in the smaller cooler along with freeze pack. Frozen items remain frozen for well over a day. The smaller cooler can be chilled in the fridge or freezer the night before.
Dude does not know that this test is flawed because the Yeti 45 is not a 45 quart cooler! It holds only 38 quarts a fact noted by several other top review sites. So adding 7lbs of ice in the Yeti when the others should have more ice because of their larger volume to make the test comparable. If you want more reliable and accurate tests you should seek out other reviews as they test with the knowledge of cooler sizes...
ICEY-TEK is the original Premium Rotomolded Cooler. Developed in the late 80s, hit the US in 1998. Engle started selling rotomold coolers in 2005. Yeti was 2006.
The ability to keep it's contents cold depends largely on the thickness of the insulated walls a cooler uses. And this is driven mostly by the thinnest walls (where the heat leaks through the fastest). Yeti implemented thick insulated walls of uniform thickness, all the others had thinner walls somewhere in their lower half. I'd long wondered why Yeti had the reputation of keeping its cool for longer - now I know. Thanks! (I feel bad that a Yeti cooler had to be sacrificed to learn this....) As for rating coolers by their ability to keep their cool, I think you had the right idea, but missed the critical tell. While the ice is melting, it wont allow the temperature to rise above the freezing point. Once all the ice has melted, temperature will begin rising. The tell: The poorest performing cooler will always be the one that rises to 33F first, while the best performing is last to reach 33F - that's all you need to know. This was in your graphs, but you missed that point. I do understand the food safety and cold beer thresholds as interesting test points, but these are proportional to the 33F times (check your data).
Years ago I built a remote cabin and before I bought a propane refrigerator I built a nice fixed cooler. I used a large action packer tote, put 4” of foam board around it sealing the edges and built a nice wooded box around that. The lid is hinged and can used as a seat. I still use it as a beverage cooler making ice with the solar powered freezer. It’s big enough to be able to just dump 60 beverage cans without having to arrange them to fit with. It’s heavy but it works. I have a drain with a valve and ice can last a week.
@@KrunchTastic The lid is the least effective place to put insulation. It helps, but not nearly as much as you think. Have doubts? Take a thermal picture of a cooler half full of ice and water on a hot day. Look where the cooler is coldest - that's where you need to put the insulation.
I made a blanket for my cooler with Reflectix and duct tape. It made a pretty significant difference in ice retention. I only put it on when we’re going to be away from the cooler while it’s sitting in the sun. Usually the ice will be half water in 3 days but now it goes about 5 days. Only problem is that it can cause glare if you’re hanging around it sometimes.
@@sasquatchrosefarts I’ve been using 20+ year old Igloo marine coolers for wilderness raft trips for decades. I have keep ice for 10 days using a wet white towel to cover the cooler. I’ve seen folks that use Reflectix panels on the top of the inside of the cooler which is also clever. Regardless proper cooler management is simple, widely available and vastly cheaper than any rotomoulded image brand cooler.
I owned Rtic, and now I own the 55 with wheels and now more of my friends are buying them, one it is cheaper, two temperature control last longer, I always take my old Rtic 45 fishing
Something to test is the lid. Worked for a company that sold yetis and a store brand yeti knockoff similar to the Amazon cooler. The lids on the knockoffs would warp pretty easily resulting in a lost seal and substantially compromised performance. The yetis didn’t seem to have that issue.
I bought into YETI when they first came out, long before the yuppie crowd started to follow the brand. I own 3 hard coolers starting with the 35 to the 65, multiple mugs, 20 and 30 oz tumblers as well. Excellent coolers and cups, when prepped correctly before use. I can go 7-10 days before needing to refill or remove my contents in the coolers and 3 days with the tumblers before ice refills.. I have traveled across country from CA-TX-FL-TX-CA with all 3 coolers in the bed of the truck with no issues. Note, I do have a tonneau cover for security and shade from direct sunlight. Tested Hint: start with the coolers at room temperature, add a light layer of dry ice, cover with paper or card board, add your contents, then cover with regular ice. Limit opening for best results..
I saw another channel do comparisons of cooler products. Lot of expensive big prestige names but also some less expensive brands. I don't remember Igloo or Amazon being included. They tested for cost, how effective at keeping cold, durability etc. Surprisingly Coleman and Ace Hardware came out on top overall on the criteria. Yeti was about the lower middle. Coleman and Ace worked as well as Yeti and other prestige brands but were way less expensive.
My coleman xtreme outperforms the same size class yeti, at 10% of the price. It is a smaller class than these in the video, but it fits perfectly behind my truck seat, so it is the correct size for my application. The coleman xtreme keeps 10 pounds of ice for a week, inside of a pickup truck in Austin during a week of 105º+ days (inside the truck it is 140º to 170º during the day and slowly cools to 89º just before sunrise). The comparable yeti keeps 10 pounds of ice for 4 days at 90º max, and costs 10 times more.
One has to consider where the heat comes from. Each side will have some heat flow. The top and sides are in contact with air, which I presume is constantly changing from air convection and present a constant temperature gradient. That's 5 out of the 6 sides. I assume there is no air currents. The bottom is on the floor and has better contact with a warm solid (infinite heat source) and will have therefore a greater heat flow. Probably the insulation needs to be greater there? Also opening the box repeatedly introduces much more heat, as to make increased insulation futile.
The Igloo had the thinnest BOTTOM insulation thickness == more heat TRANSFER VIA CONDUCTION from the floor, which is a bigger factor than heat transfer via convection with the air. Place the cooler on a folded blanket or rug to improve performance.
I have a first gen. Yeti 80 that I bought in '07 that still works fine after many river trips although the original latches broke and I can't find replacements as the design changed. Added a 45 Rtic when they came out as they were about half the price and am still quite happy with it. Now the market is being flooded with other heavy duty coolers that are all pretty good. Wonder when Yeti will drop their prices to compete.
You also have to look at two more factors the density of the foam used in insulation and the thickness of the plastics used in the shell. You can see the yeti has a thicker plastic than the others, but I would also venture to say their foam dinsity is different that the others which would contribute to their ability to maintain colder temperatures for a longer period.
The other thing is that none of that matters . As long as they keep it cool for the time you need . I have an rtic and a yeti . They both melted and the water penetrated through the opening of the cans . It actually went into the drinks.
I have the Yeti 45 and the Lifetime from Walmart. the YETI holds ice longer. For everyday use the Lifetime is fine but for a three or four-day camping trip with no ice re supply the Yeti is the best of the two.
The temperature duration would only be aplicalble if you are storing something and only open the cooler one time. When you're camping the cooler is opened many, many times.
Would have appreciated prices at the end of the video. Got an RTIC for $190. It's a beast, but still pleased with it versus what was available at the time (2018) for the price.
Lol I have a 18 dollar cooler I bought in 1998. It was hollow so I filled it with spray foam for windows on the jobsite one day. So to this day it keeps ice for 3 days
Though Yeti can be over hyped at times, there is something too be said about there performance and resiliance. I got my coolers through prodeals so I payed Walmart cooler prices for high yetis. I have a Tundra 45 and hopper 30 soft cooler. Both have served very well and I have nothing bad to say about them. The only thing is there regular selling price is very pricey. But I supppose it all depends on the person buying the cooler and what they need it for. I camp alot, got cottages, do long days of biking were I return to my cooler full of extra cold beverages and being on the north east coast we deal with hella heat waves. So I appreciat Yeti's insane temp retention.
I don’t really care which one I use. It’s not like I’m gonna be there for a week or two overnight that’s it even your cheapest Walmart on will work.😊 I’ll just go with the cheapest one
Maybe the total capacity of the first cooler was established by simple measuremant? In that way, the small extra, empty space could not be filled with cams of drink, since drink can have definite volume that cannot be changed in any way.
As a craftsman I like my combinable Makita "Systainers" for tools, so When I found out I could buy a Cooler version, in two sizes, I bought both! They are able to be combined in stacks! And on a transport roller for the floor.
I have the Yeti Tundra and it is the best cooler we've ever had. People complain about the price, but I got what I paid for, so it was worth it for us.
I’m fairly shocked that the boujee Yeti actually was a good performer. At least you get something for the premium. Still wouldn’t put their sticker on my truck tho. 😁
I have 2 yeti coolers and one works better than the other . But my Cabelas cooler outperforms them both... I packed it full of ice and left it outside for 7 days at temperatures ranging from 60 to 100 . By the end of day 6 there were a few pieces floating and a lot of very cold water. My yeti is good for about 4-5 days.. this is just my experience.
I have multiple yeti and rtic coolers in several sizes and l only buy Rtic now. Also funny how that heavy bad performing rtic is the one he didn't cut open so he could keep it.
In the old home groups, they often say that if you're starting with a completely uninsulated home, you're best off putting starting with air sealing (eliminate drafts around doors, windows, etc) and then put 100% of your insulation budget into the attic until that's up to modern standards. Heat rises, and while insulation in the walls is important, most of your heat is lost through the roof. That looks like what Yeti did. They insulated the top better than the other 2, and it performed better. They also keep the sides flat. I'm not sure that the extra width of the sides at the top of the Amazon cooler is that beneficial. Probably would have been better if that extra insulation was in the top instead of the top of the sides.
That’s honestly the better way to go IF you have power and are staying longer periods. I thought about buying one for when we go camping. I have a mini fridge in my camper but it’s not as convenient as a cooler outside plus it struggles to keep up when opening repeatedly.
I own the igloo and it worked great. Held ice for three days… I literally just today bought insulation with adhesive on it and it fits perfect on it. Let’s see if it makes a difference.
I did a experiment a couple years ago with a old school cooler. I put a bag of ice in it on my porch and it lasted 48 hours. I then got a few cans of expanding foam and drilled some holes in the lid and sides and filled it up i also added a inch of hard foam in the bottom. I added a bag of ice and it lasted about 62 hours so adding the foam did help considerably.
Another test you may want to include is floatability, especially if you take the cooler on a boat. If the boat capsizes for whatever reason, hanging onto the cooler can save your life, especially if you did not have time to don your lifejacket. I would suspect that certain coolers are able to keep only a person of certain weight afloat.....that's what you need to test: how many pounds each cooler can keep afloat (weights hanging over the side of a cooler while in a lake).
I hunt a lot, and you have to have good coolers to hold your food for several days. I’ve had Igloo and Rtic coolers before and they were ok, but usually required a pretty long trip into town for a re-up on ice about halfway through the trip (day 2). Over the last few years I have bought a couple Yeti 45’s, and it’s not even close. I hate the cost, but they work so much better. I can hunt for 3 days and there’s usually still ice on day 4 when I leave.
The styrofoam gas station Pabst Blue Ribbon coolers are what I buy. They effectively keep things cold for 8-12 hrs. After that, I just want to go home and get away from the obnoxious turds who brag about their expensive coolers. Besides, warm beer doesn't scare me in the slightest.
You can get Rtic. Pelican or a Cabela's coolers for less money and do the same if not better. Pelican cooler's are the only actually bear proof. Cooler's with their latches !!!
You should try a Cabelas cooler, better than the Yeti at a much better price.... I own both brands in similar sizes and the Cabelas will hold ice 2 to 3 days longer consistently. BTW, the Yeti 45 does not actually hold 45 quarts, its really like 35 which may give it an advantage if loaded up with the same amount of cans and ice since it will have less air space. They do their numbering kind of weird, it has to do with the external dimensions compared to other brands not actual liquid capacity, they mention this in their FAQ's on the website.
I wonder what company builds the cooler for Cabelas? They don't build it themselves. So its probably made by the same company who builds one of these in the video
One of the best insulators for heat (cold is the lack of heat) is non- moving air. That is why more insulation (which conducts heat) isn't always better.
EVERY YETI is made in Chinese sweatshops, where 10 year olds are abused. At least IGLOO makes a huge amount of their coolers in the USA. Since I have a choice here, I will buy American….
I think Igloo is made in Katy, Tx!! Or between Katy and Brookshire Tx. They have deals in Saturday at 2 pm if you can make it out there. I think RTIC in made is Cypress Tx. They have a really cool shop also
omg safety first and then the first glimpse he's wearing sandals too LOL. what this has taught me so far (about to see the cut reveal) is that YETI *isn't* just a gimmick company. i thought they might be on account of beautiful designs and all the colors, plus all the instagram-level hype. i do own 2 14oz coffee mug style travel mugs and use them constantly. (otherwise i'm one of those that has to excessively reheat coffee as i don't chug it in one blast.). and, one of those tall water things cuz my mom wasn't using it. score!! this sh*t's expensive! anyway, BUILD QUALITY and well thought out design like the lid systems.... just always really impressed by that. i guess it's a sign of a good brand vs just marketing. tho..... perhaps they're a brand that's managed to do both. (still can't get over a mug being $35+. managed to get mine on sale or REI bucks or something. the dark green i had to hunt down as it was discontinued.)
The BMX is a Yeti KILLER! I've had ice hold for 6 days in the summer when I leave the drain plug open to prevent soggy food. $100 vs. $325 is a clear no-brainer. Buy 3 BMX coolers and slay one yeti. YETI coolers are for showboats with too much money in their pockets.
@@blackhawk7r221 anyone can sell anything for a fraction of the price and still make profit but they don’t. It’s called capitalism. Look at the price of pick up trucks and SUVs. Approaching close to six digits. You’re telling me Ford and GM couldn’t sell it for a fraction of the price and still make profit? They don’t buy people still buy them.
Also, this guy put a wire through the seal. It's a useless test. It proves the yeti is best with a wire in the seal. But maybe without the wire all the results could be different.
People cry about yeti but they are the best looking coolers and work well. I got one on sale in tan and like it. I did have an issue with the lid being a little warped and yeti swapped it out for a new one no questions asked. Good service.
Yeti is just overpriced though, they could cut their prices and open up their availability to more of the market and probably make more than they are now and at that point probably put other brands out of business and take that for themselves.
I was a faithful Yeti-ite until my Rambler tumbler that is 8 months old suddenly stopped keeping ice! It would melt within 2 hours!! So i let them know and they basically refused to do anything about it! So Im trying out an RTIC tumbler. It was ablout half as much... see how it does.
Definitely. Many swear by the RTIC. And what makes it so much heavier? Thicker plastic walls, more foam insulation? Something sounds very fishy to me... The fact he didn't cut it open was moronic. Why wouldn't you, especially to find out the weight giant difference??? Definitely sounds paid.
I have 4 different rtic hard coolers. My brother has all yeti coolers and for some reason my rtic coolers hold ice longer than his yeti coolers and mine were way cheaper and they seem to weigh the same. I think this fella may be benefiting from this. They are the same coolers except things tend to cost less with rtic.
Sorry, maybe it's just the sentimental value, but the best cooler I've found is an old Igloo with metal hardware that my grandparents bought long ago. Over 40 years of camping and parties, and still going strong. That and my grandfather's Stanley thermos are two of the best everyday examples of "they don't make them like they used to".
I respectfully disagree. I have both, and I take them on hunting trips that usually last about 4-ish days, sometimes 5. This is in Rocksprings, Texas and it hits close to 115 degrees in the summer. I prep my coolers by filling with ice the day before a trip and getting the actual cooler itself as cold as possible and I let them sit inside the house in the A/C, then I pack my food with fresh ice and try not to open the coolers very often. My RTIC 52 is generally about out of ice at the end of day 2 or early on day 3. My Yeti coolers will still have plenty of ice for the trip home. I’ve done this same trip many, many times with the same results. I always use the RTIC to pack the stuff that doesn’t require the ice as much. Butter, milk, creamer, OJ, etc. Meat and canned drinks always go in the Yetis. Just my experience, YMMV. 🍻
Yeah, but the Yeti is ridiculously expensive. I wonder if you could make the Igloo work as well by gluing a 1/2" thick piece of styrofoam to the bottom, and squirting some RTV around the gap between the lid and the body?
100% CLICKBAIT. He makes it look like there's a big problem with the Yeti from the picture on the video and when you get into it you find out it's just ANOTHER cooler review. I wish YouTUbers would stop using this tired old trick to get you to click the video.
I bought my husband two Yeti Tundras different sizes for Christmas and birthday and he loves them. Saved a whole lot of $$$ when my freezer died and my coolers kept my meat for daze!!!
Yeti uses a better foam formula. I am a foam formulator, I don't know specifics because I don't work in insulation foam but I know the guy that formulates for yeti and he's a master
I bought a "knock off" from Aldi and it performs quite well. I would love to cut it in half and see what its features are, but, alas, it's my go to cooler.
Cool learning about fancy new stuff even though I'm happy using a free old-fashioned cooler and a free old down blanket wrapped all the way around that. I can be on the road with a ton of food in there camping with my boys and 10# of ice can last 3-5 days, depending on ambient temps. Would be clumsy in a canoe, but just fine in the SUV. :-)
I’ve probably spent $3500 with RTIC in the last ~5 years with various giveaways, contests, fundraising and non-profit gifts (I love their price point and customer service). I have their soft coolers and bags. Our families love them. Ha. Funny story….I won a Yeti 45 at work during a sales contest. Thanks for the video! I’d be curious of a RTIC 52 Lightweight Review. Thanks for the video!
A couple of things you could have done, the amount of force to open the lid, a fishing scale would have done the job. And Another one would be to get a sample of the foam from each one the same size and see if there is a difference in the weight
I have a Lifetime rotomolded cooler and feel they are the best in the market. Low cost. Ice for a week or more. Solid secure latches. Big knob for the drain. Rope handles. Its never failed me.
A sales person told me right out.. its a status symbol thing.. Yeah they work very well. There is something unique then about the formulation or the matrix design of the insulation material that Yeti fills it with . The foam possiblely has substantially way more microscopic air pockets in it.. ??? 😊
I started getting back into outdoor stuff a couple years ago after not doing much of it since the 80's and 90's. I absolutely choked when I saw what coolers are going for these days. It's absurd. _Especially_ when it comes to Yeti. No thanks, I'll just get a cheap Igloo or Ozark Trail. Those work just fine for me.
well YETI is the apple of coolers. If you can afford it just fine, you will look cooler, no pun intended, and the job will get done a little bit better. If not, regular coolers are just fine, as you say.
Igloos aren't the cheapest. I'd say Coleman is. But I think igloos are actually pretty good.
@@joewoodchuck3824 I can't remember the last time I saw a Coleman cooler anywhere.
@@Brunnen_Gee I haven't actually looked, but if Coleman is anywhere it will be at Walmart or on the web someplace. After having igloo, I'd stay away from Coleman if at all possible. I'm not really interested in upper price range coolers unless it's for something truly precious like a load of freshly caught fish or venison.
If you carry food through the desert for five days and get paid based on how good the food is...its very clear that the expensive coolers are worth it...although Yeti isn't my favorite or the most expensive
I was an insulator for yeti. Their standards are out of this world. We threw way more away than we kept when starting up at our factory. Even after we got the ball rolling we threw away a ridiculous amount because of quality control. The foam has to be perfect for the cooler to hit the shelf.
That explains the cost, which is hilarious to me because everyone I know whines about how poor the QC is for almost every product sold today. They also whine about the cost of Yeti coolers.
It is stupid to throw away more than 2% of a build. You have lousy design staff.
@@frankorosz901 terrible production process. bet they barely break even and make no money
This! Quality matters, and price alone should not be the #1 factor when deciding what to buy. I hate that Yeti is so expensive but it's made the best. Sadly the cut open test is pointless unless you plan to analyze why the Yeti foam is working better, eg. you could weigh it, or put a heat source the other side of it (eg. a 50W light) and measure thermal conduction through the foam.
Anyway to go dumpster diving at the end of the day.
I have the Ozark Trail knock off. Packing the cooler for a campout by layering food and ice in layers worked best for me. I also don't place my cooler on the ground, instead resting it on four bricks and placing a light blanket over it to keep the sun off of it seems to help a lot to
The blanket should be on and around the cooler bottom. That's where the most loss is.
Most definitely, wrap it as best you can when transporting an not using it, and always keep the sun off it. I will wrap up mine nicely with an old wool blanket I have, then cover that with a heavy jacket I always have in my car, to keep the sun off it. When I'm starting to use it and open it, I always just make sure to just quickly cover it with the blanket or jacket. You don't have to rich, just smart!
I have the Walmart knock off.... It's no better than a Coleman extreme.
@@jwdundon for cold/ice retention i agree. but for long term durablity a rotomolded cooler can't be beat.
I just bought a $22 igloo 20qt cooler. It holds ice for more than 24 hours in summer heat (as long as it's not directly in the sunlight). Is it worth an extra 250-300 dollars just so that I can avoid putting an extra $2 bag of ice in?
As for long term reliability, a rotomolded cooler would need to hold up for 10-15 times longer than my cooler to make it worth the price increase.
A cooler is one of the easiest things not to beat up on. I can't imagine any normal use situation that would break a budget cooler.
if you want a small but cheap alternative to a rotomolded cooler i have had success with buying a normal plastic coleman cooler of my choosing, and doing a simple mod,
just drill the inside in a few spots, inject spray foam between the plastic layers (like low expanding "great stuff" from home depot), and fill the holes with epoxy after, adding the layer of foam makes the ice last many times longer,
I'd like to see some tests on this. Different foams etc vs the overpriced coolers
@@smithjohn3080 it doesnt work, because of thermal mass, there is people on youtube who have tested this a looot and it never works, because adding a bunch of foam just makes your cooler literally eat ice as the huge volume of foam you added sucks all the cold out of your ice, i'm an idiot, i dunno how to articulate the sciency bits, but just do a search, i believe they drilled a different yeti cooler, and one form like the 90's and all of them kept things cold worse than stock from the store, cuz the manufacturers have math and stuff they use to do things with but 300 for a cooler is dumb, all new coolers are a scam, i just buy them at good will for 2$ from the 80's keeps ice in it for 2 days minimum, during fall i can camp for 5 days with a 80's cooler, there is no need at all for these yeti ones. i guess unless your camping in a desert for a week or on some expedition, but in both cases you would not ever be dragging a big ass cooler around with you when you do it
I did that with a cheap steel thermos and it keeps coffee warm for 12 hrs,far better than the stanley thermos I have.
I don't see how foam improves ice retention when air is an excellent insulator. Air in fact has the same R value as foam does.
@@joewoodchuck3824 If you have a gap filled with air, you can get natural convection circuit going which reduces the insulation properties when compared to still air. The inside wall is cold and the outside wall will be hot. The air touching the inside wall will cool and get dense so it will drop, the air touching the outside wall will warm reducing it's density so it will rise. Now you have hot air outside rising and cold air descending and they start a circuit. The insulation creates pockets of still air which cause the heat transfer to be more like conduction through the air. If the insulation is too dense you can get conduction through the insulation.
I like how he says it's a 45 quart cooler when in fact yeti is quite deceitful and go by "model numbers" and the 45 isn't 45 quarts. As far as I know they are the only major brand that does this and it also makes this no surprise it performs better as it is smaller on the inside than every other cooler here so with 7lb of ice it has less of a area to cool.
That and they have 3 inches of foam in the lid! instead of no foam in the lid!!
I have both a YETI and an RTIC cooler. Honestly most anyone would be fine with either. They are both excellent coolers and both have held ice for three days in my garage during the summer. The one plus I would give to RTIC is cost vs YETI. They run considerably cheaper than YETI, but if it performs worse than YETI it is not by a noticeable difference to most.
Agree with your comment about YETI vs RTIC
Do you think th RTIC would keep ice for 7days+ on a river trip like the Yeti? I've used pretty much all yetis in the past, the RTIC is super tempting due to the cost, though.
@@TheJordanicas yeah, I don't think it would be more than like a 10% difference between yeti and rtic. If they didn't have the different names on them they would feel the exact same.
@@TheJordanicasI have both the Yeti and the RTIC 65. Other than cost, you will not notice a difference between the two.
i actually returned my yeti after getting a walmart Ozark Trail 45. i did my own test with 20 lbs of ice and a 12 pk. , ozark is grey and yeti was white and i set them in the direct sun last july. after 3 days the ozark trail still had ice and the yeti had no ice and the drink were not frosty, just kinda cold.
Nah😂
This is correct. I’m a whitewater rafter and I have a yeti, a canyon and an Ozark trail that I use. The Ozark is outstanding. 😎🤙
At the 8:19 mark it is clear that each of the non-Yeti coolers has a place wherein the insulation is thinner: the Igloo on the bottom and the Amazon on the lower rear wall. The Yeti appears to be consistent thickness all the way around. I would not be surprised if that is a significant factor in the difference between the performance numbers. The thin Igloo floor is especially concerning because that surface is in direct contact with the floor. In a garage the concrete would be a massive reverse heatsink warming the bottom of the coolers.
Remember, Yeti is anti 2 A !!!
The Yeti has rubber feet which would further insulate it from the ground.
Thank you for the testing and the chopping up of these costly coolers. This really gives us great insight of how they are made although they're horribly expensive. I've been told that a decent foam cooler works almost as well.
I don’t care if it’s the greatest cooler in the history of the universe… I ain’t paying $300 for a cooler.
But there's probably something that you pay an extraordinary amount of money for, that others would say you're crazy for doing so. It's all in what makes you happy.
I agree with you since I was a kid I’ve only seen igloo coolers they did the job then they do the job now .
I bought the RTIC a years back when they went down in price to $175ish and between the pinchpoints and the lack of space it’s not worth it. There was one particular time my brother and I had a bunch of dried ice food on an elk hunt that we kept back at the truck. It worked perfect for this application. The only thing is the cooler has to be able to breathe/decompress as the dry ice sublimates.
I have a yeti tundra and it’s awesome🤣
I paid $328 for my yeti and used it once, filled it up with $35 of beer and $7 in ice put it in the back of my truck drank 2 beers, went inside a fast food joint came out and my cooler was gone, so it's back to my igloo, I hope the kids that stole it get a nice big hangover.
Went camping with a friend and his wife last year. He had the Yeti and I have the Igloo, his cost almost 400 bucks and I paid 95 for mine. we both had 2 blocks of ice on the bottom and there was zero difference in ice melt after 3 days, both performed identically. Some company's will always go after the "Sucker born every minute crowd and Yeti has always been one of these company's. If you dont think so, well go buy one of their $400 cast iron fry pans.
3 days? 😂😆😆😝😆😂 I’ve been on 2 week long elk hunts with the Yeti and the Igloo and the Thermos and there’s no comparison kid! The Yeti far outperforms the Igloo and Thermos EVERY time!
This is the mentality of someone that sees a beautiful, expensive sports car and says my car is almost as fast as that one and costs a fourth of the price haha what a fool to pay for the sports car!! Meanwhile his car is a cheaply built rust bucket with bad interior and a couple windows that don’t roll down.
@@zackdaripr EXACTLY!
I like Ozark trail
The key to the Yeti insulation is the thickness is uniform. Just look at the profiles of the three next to one another. The fact that the Amazon has the thickest means absolutely nothing if it still has some of the thinnest wall. You are only as good or protected as the thinnest part of your walls. The other key to the Yeti is that their latches make the lid always have a super tight seal. their cleat style latch makes you pull the lid down tight every single time you close the lid and secure it.
It funny how the other 2 had really thin bottom insulation.. do your in summer ground temp is 80 degrees and your setting g your cooler with 1 inch insulation on the warm ground.. good choice eh.
@@jeffsim8664this is amplified further on aluminum boat decks in the sun
I found a perfectly good large white Yeti floating in our lake after spring freshet. It did not have any markings on it so we kept it. This thing has been through hell and back and has teeth marks on it from a enraged black bear cub that got frustrated trying to open it .
They are a great product but am glad I never had to pay the price for it. Now that I own one if it were to be stolen I would gladly pay the price for a new one.
We also take this cooler on our blue water sailboat as it is great for keeping our food cold while defrosting our cruising fridge and freezer. They are old school and have to be manually defrosted.
Nothing better than free good stuff!
This would have been more helpful if you did a cost/performance metric. I RARELY use my cooler for more than 48 hours and when I looked at the Yeti, it's performance was great well after that time period, but the cost was very high. So take each of your performance metrics and divide it by cost, then compare (you can even weight each metric). The Yeti was 3.75 times the price of the Igloo. @50 hours the Igloo is at 38 and the Yeti is at 32. If you're using your cooler for more than 48 hours it might be worth the difference. The price/performance really depends on your individual situation.
Put wires through the seals....... Totally changes the cooler performance. Seals are critical and he nullified the most mportant thing to test. Stopping air circulation.
I wish I had something like the Yeti for the Maria hurricane aftermath; Any ice you got after a long line for hours was lost in less than12 hours, lost all perishable food in a short time.
@@sasquatchrosefarts The tiny wires through the seals made no difference it was still sealed because the seals are flexible enough to go around the wires and still seal if he would have tipped it with water inside I'm confident that the coolers with seals would not have spilled anything.
I guess the test was based purely on performance. And for that the Yeti wins hands-down. Alas, I agree, I couldn’t afford the Yeti so I bought the Woods cooler instead.
@@sasquatchrosefartsAll of them had the same wire thickness. Even if it skewed the data, all 4 had that same point.
I chose RTIC over Yeti years ago. Bought (2) 45’s & (1) 65. Got a great price at the end of the lawsuit. Performance was the same, but the cost was maybe 1/3. They are great for long term temperature control, not for repeated opening to get drinks out all day. Then they perform like regular coolers.
I gotta say I'm totally impressed with the professional temperature graphs, the scientific ladder experiment, and the exceptional cooler cutting skills; as for those Camel City Mill socks, they're awesome for keeping my feet totally dry and comfortable. Love the humor.
He put wires through the seals.....it's terrible. He's a dunce. The seals are what stops air circulation. The test is totally unrepresentative of what it does with a proper seal.
@@sasquatchrosefarts Lighten up.... all the coolers were treated the same way so it all comes out even in the end. How else was he going to test the temperatures without opening the cooler? .... that would have given you something else to bitch about. Dunce.
I have an old timey Igloo cooler I bought at a discount store about 25-30 years ago for not a whole lot of money and it will keep ice for 3 days. Granted, there is not much ice left after 3 days, but the melt water is really cold. It has handles molded into the sides, so it isn't easy to move around, but it is such a good cooler I can't get rid of it. Therefore, I have no incentive to spend hundreds on a Yeti when my $10 cooler works for me. Also, as a woman, I feel those expensive coolers are WAY too heavy unloaded and would be prohibitively heavy loaded, so, still keeping my old timer.
I’ve got an older Igloo cooler from at least 15 years ago. I’m keeping the old timer too! Works great, molded handles on the side that suck lol. But most importantly, it’s got wheels and a retractable handle. Love it and it likely cost me $30 at the time
I'd be interested to see you add in the RTIC 52 Qt. Ultra-Light. It comes in at 8 lbs. less than the normal RTIC 45 Qt. as well as being cheaper so I'm curious how it performs. I'd love to see a chart of all the data from all these tests compared. I'd also like to see a price included in there too for reference. Like, yeah the YETI might be the best performer, but at 3.5x the price of the Igloo is that extra money really worth it? Overall a very interesting video tho! I'd love to see an Ozark Trail one thrown in there too!
A lot depends on if you know how to pack a cooler. Years ago I had an igloo 54 at. To pack it full of beer I'd lay the bottom full with the cans on their sides. Then I'd put a thin layer of ice on top of that and repeat the process until I had 2 cases of beer in it. I would have cold beer for 4 to 5 days . Of course it took 2 fairly strong guys to carry it.
I use a Coleman marine cooler which is fine for a few days (2-3 days or more depending on how much ice is put in). Have you ever packed your burgers, dogs, steaks, etc... in a ziplock bag only to grab it and its filled with water? What I do is to use a smaller cooler (with thin sides) and place that in the big cooler. Place whatever I do not want to get wet in the smaller cooler along with freeze pack. Frozen items remain frozen for well over a day. The smaller cooler can be chilled in the fridge or freezer the night before.
Dude does not know that this test is flawed because the Yeti 45 is not a 45 quart cooler! It holds only 38 quarts a fact noted by several other top review sites. So adding 7lbs of ice in the Yeti when the others should have more ice because of their larger volume to make the test comparable. If you want more reliable and accurate tests you should seek out other reviews as they test with the knowledge of cooler sizes...
Exactly! Finally, someone understands if you load ice in proportion to the internal capacity, you’d have a fair test.
ICEY-TEK is the original Premium Rotomolded Cooler. Developed in the late 80s, hit the US in 1998. Engle started selling rotomold coolers in 2005. Yeti was 2006.
The ability to keep it's contents cold depends largely on the thickness of the insulated walls a cooler uses. And this is driven mostly by the thinnest walls (where the heat leaks through the fastest). Yeti implemented thick insulated walls of uniform thickness, all the others had thinner walls somewhere in their lower half.
I'd long wondered why Yeti had the reputation of keeping its cool for longer - now I know. Thanks!
(I feel bad that a Yeti cooler had to be sacrificed to learn this....)
As for rating coolers by their ability to keep their cool, I think you had the right idea, but missed the critical tell. While the ice is melting, it wont allow the temperature to rise above the freezing point. Once all the ice has melted, temperature will begin rising.
The tell: The poorest performing cooler will always be the one that rises to 33F first, while the best performing is last to reach 33F - that's all you need to know. This was in your graphs, but you missed that point. I do understand the food safety and cold beer thresholds as interesting test points, but these are proportional to the 33F times (check your data).
He put wires through the seals. The tests are useless.......because the seals are the most important part.
@@sasquatchrosefartsseals are the only thing that matters. Plastic and foam thickness doesn't matter that much after a certain thickness.
Years ago I built a remote cabin and before I bought a propane refrigerator I built a nice fixed cooler. I used a large action packer tote, put 4” of foam board around it sealing the edges and built a nice wooded box around that. The lid is hinged and can used as a seat. I still use it as a beverage cooler making ice with the solar powered freezer. It’s big enough to be able to just dump 60 beverage cans without having to arrange them to fit with. It’s heavy but it works. I have a drain with a valve and ice can last a week.
This person understand that latent heat is a thing.. its not just about sensible heat
@@KrunchTastic The lid is the least effective place to put insulation. It helps, but not nearly as much as you think. Have doubts? Take a thermal picture of a cooler half full of ice and water on a hot day. Look where the cooler is coldest - that's where you need to put the insulation.
I made a blanket for my cooler with Reflectix and duct tape. It made a pretty significant difference in ice retention. I only put it on when we’re going to be away from the cooler while it’s sitting in the sun. Usually the ice will be half water in 3 days but now it goes about 5 days. Only problem is that it can cause glare if you’re hanging around it sometimes.
Genius. A cheap cooler, and ten dollars of reflectix , and a junk blanket over top and around bottom.
@@sasquatchrosefarts I’ve been using 20+ year old Igloo marine coolers for wilderness raft trips for decades. I have keep ice for 10 days using a wet white towel to cover the cooler. I’ve seen folks that use Reflectix panels on the top of the inside of the cooler which is also clever. Regardless proper cooler management is simple, widely available and vastly cheaper than any rotomoulded image brand cooler.
@@bertsrake yes, thanks. And this guy put wires through the seals. Totally nullifies his test results.
@@bertsrake if the river is cold...... Just strap a mesh bag of food on the back of the raft 🤣 in the water.
I owned Rtic, and now I own the 55 with wheels and now more of my friends are buying them, one it is cheaper, two temperature control last longer, I always take my old Rtic 45 fishing
And prolly won't get stolen like a Yeti
Something to test is the lid. Worked for a company that sold yetis and a store brand yeti knockoff similar to the Amazon cooler. The lids on the knockoffs would warp pretty easily resulting in a lost seal and substantially compromised performance. The yetis didn’t seem to have that issue.
My yeti 65 bought in 2019 came with a warped lid
@@josephnelson9020it's a design feature...
My tundra 70 warped twice. Had it replaced twice...gave up and just use it.
I bought into YETI when they first came out, long before the yuppie crowd started to follow the brand. I own 3 hard coolers starting with the 35 to the 65, multiple mugs, 20 and 30 oz tumblers as well. Excellent coolers and cups, when prepped correctly before use. I can go 7-10 days before needing to refill or remove my contents in the coolers and 3 days with the tumblers before ice refills.. I have traveled across country from CA-TX-FL-TX-CA with all 3 coolers in the bed of the truck with no issues. Note, I do have a tonneau cover for security and shade from direct sunlight. Tested Hint: start with the coolers at room temperature, add a light layer of dry ice, cover with paper or card board, add your contents, then cover with regular ice. Limit opening for best results..
I saw another channel do comparisons of cooler products. Lot of expensive big prestige names but also some less expensive brands. I don't remember Igloo or Amazon being included. They tested for cost, how effective at keeping cold, durability etc. Surprisingly Coleman and Ace Hardware came out on top overall on the criteria. Yeti was about the lower middle. Coleman and Ace worked as well as Yeti and other prestige brands but were way less expensive.
My coleman xtreme outperforms the same size class yeti, at 10% of the price. It is a smaller class than these in the video, but it fits perfectly behind my truck seat, so it is the correct size for my application. The coleman xtreme keeps 10 pounds of ice for a week, inside of a pickup truck in Austin during a week of 105º+ days (inside the truck it is 140º to 170º during the day and slowly cools to 89º just before sunrise). The comparable yeti keeps 10 pounds of ice for 4 days at 90º max, and costs 10 times more.
I took a Coleman Xtreme on a trip down Labyrinth Canyon in Utah when it was 105F every day. We still had cold lemonade at the start of the fifth day.
One has to consider where the heat comes from. Each side will have some heat flow. The top and sides are in contact with air, which I presume is constantly changing from air convection and present a constant temperature gradient. That's 5 out of the 6 sides. I assume there is no air currents. The bottom is on the floor and has better contact with a warm solid (infinite heat source) and will have therefore a greater heat flow. Probably the insulation needs to be greater there? Also opening the box repeatedly introduces much more heat, as to make increased insulation futile.
The Igloo had the thinnest BOTTOM insulation thickness == more heat TRANSFER VIA CONDUCTION from the floor, which is a bigger factor than heat transfer via convection with the air. Place the cooler on a folded blanket or rug to improve performance.
Place a layer of Styrofoam at the bottom of your cooler.
Or place some sheet foam inside the bottom from a home improvement store
I have a first gen. Yeti 80 that I bought in '07 that still works fine after many river trips although the original latches broke and I can't find replacements as the design changed. Added a 45 Rtic when they came out as they were about half the price and am still quite happy with it. Now the market is being flooded with other heavy duty coolers that are all pretty good. Wonder when Yeti will drop their prices to compete.
You also have to look at two more factors the density of the foam used in insulation and the thickness of the plastics used in the shell. You can see the yeti has a thicker plastic than the others, but I would also venture to say their foam dinsity is different that the others which would contribute to their ability to maintain colder temperatures for a longer period.
The other thing is that none of that matters . As long as they keep it cool for the time you need . I have an rtic and a yeti . They both melted and the water penetrated through the opening of the cans . It actually went into the drinks.
I have the Yeti 45 and the Lifetime from Walmart. the YETI holds ice longer. For everyday use the Lifetime is fine but for a three or four-day camping trip with no ice re supply the Yeti is the best of the two.
Great video - you got right into it. I didn't even want to know about coolers, but I watched the whole thing because the delivery was so good
I use a Yeti on my boat in Arizona where it gets north of 120 in the summer. Best cooler I have owned.
The temperature duration would only be aplicalble if you are storing something and only open the cooler one time. When you're camping the cooler is opened many, many times.
this would be another neat round of tests. doing the same, but with multiple openings to see how temp handles then.
I have had many coolers in my professional rafting career and Yeti is the shit.
I never knew I needed this information until now. And it looks like I'll be needing new socks for work.
Well done Sir!
Would have appreciated prices at the end of the video. Got an RTIC for $190. It's a beast, but still pleased with it versus what was available at the time (2018) for the price.
Lol I have a 18 dollar cooler I bought in 1998. It was hollow so I filled it with spray foam for windows on the jobsite one day. So to this day it keeps ice for 3 days
Though Yeti can be over hyped at times, there is something too be said about there performance and resiliance. I got my coolers through prodeals so I payed Walmart cooler prices for high yetis. I have a Tundra 45 and hopper 30 soft cooler. Both have served very well and I have nothing bad to say about them. The only thing is there regular selling price is very pricey. But I supppose it all depends on the person buying the cooler and what they need it for.
I camp alot, got cottages, do long days of biking were I return to my cooler full of extra cold beverages and being on the north east coast we deal with hella heat waves. So I appreciat Yeti's insane temp retention.
I don’t really care which one I use. It’s not like I’m gonna be there for a week or two overnight that’s it even your cheapest Walmart on will work.😊 I’ll just go with the cheapest one
Thats the majority of us, using it for a day or two.
Maybe the total capacity of the first cooler was established by simple measuremant?
In that way, the small extra, empty space could not be filled with cams of drink, since drink can have definite volume that cannot be changed in any way.
I use a styrofoam cooler because I’m not stupid!😂
As a craftsman I like my combinable Makita "Systainers" for tools, so When I found out I could buy a Cooler version, in two sizes, I bought both! They are able to be combined in stacks! And on a transport roller for the floor.
I have the Yeti Tundra and it is the best cooler we've ever had. People complain about the price, but I got what I paid for, so it was worth it for us.
And you probably drive a piece of crap thing that you call a jeep
I own both the Yeti Hondo and Trail chairs......worth every Benjamin
I’m fairly shocked that the boujee Yeti actually was a good performer. At least you get something for the premium. Still wouldn’t put their sticker on my truck tho. 😁
bourgie?
@@psmith7781 yeah. Google wasn’t helping me out on that one. 😁
Ha HA! Never got that either!. Spend $600 bucks on a cooler and then advertise for them.
What’s the origin of bougie/boojee/boujie ?
@@scottbarnett3566 bourgeoisie=middle class, not the peasantry? I'm guessing here....
I have 2 yeti coolers and one works better than the other . But my Cabelas cooler outperforms them both... I packed it full of ice and left it outside for 7 days at temperatures ranging from 60 to 100 . By the end of day 6 there were a few pieces floating and a lot of very cold water. My yeti is good for about 4-5 days.. this is just my experience.
Pelican,what about the great Pelican Coolers?
Yeti coolers - 2006
Engel Coolers - 2004. Prefer the engel. Yeti just has better marketing. Ice retention is pretty much identical
Id like to see the ladder test with the coolers loaded with drinks and ice. Could be interesting to see if any break open.
My Rtic fell off of the truck at 35mph and didn't come open. The feet popped put of the bottom but it never opened or leaked.
Love Yeti's. Had a problem with a cooler. Sent back, got a new one. No questions asked.
Literally everyone I know with these coolers all say get the RTIC
I have multiple yeti and rtic coolers in several sizes and l only buy Rtic now. Also funny how that heavy bad performing rtic is the one he didn't cut open so he could keep it.
In the old home groups, they often say that if you're starting with a completely uninsulated home, you're best off putting starting with air sealing (eliminate drafts around doors, windows, etc) and then put 100% of your insulation budget into the attic until that's up to modern standards. Heat rises, and while insulation in the walls is important, most of your heat is lost through the roof.
That looks like what Yeti did. They insulated the top better than the other 2, and it performed better. They also keep the sides flat. I'm not sure that the extra width of the sides at the top of the Amazon cooler is that beneficial. Probably would have been better if that extra insulation was in the top instead of the top of the sides.
The cost of these coolers strikes me as ridiculous considering i can buy a 12v freezer of similar capacity for less money
That’s honestly the better way to go IF you have power and are staying longer periods. I thought about buying one for when we go camping. I have a mini fridge in my camper but it’s not as convenient as a cooler outside plus it struggles to keep up when opening repeatedly.
@@whatfreedom7 power is easy if I'm going to be away from my house or vehicle I run it on Milwaukie batteries
I own the igloo and it worked great. Held ice for three days… I literally just today bought insulation with adhesive on it and it fits perfect on it.
Let’s see if it makes a difference.
I did a experiment a couple years ago with a old school cooler. I put a bag of ice in it on my porch and it lasted 48 hours. I then got a few cans of expanding foam and drilled some holes in the lid and sides and filled it up i also added a inch of hard foam in the bottom. I added a bag of ice and it lasted about 62 hours so adding the foam did help considerably.
@@bishbosh7728 nice… no need to spend all that money on a Yeti
What I learned from this is I have to cut my products i buy in half to make sure I’m getting my freaking moneys worth.
Another test you may want to include is floatability, especially if you take the cooler on a boat. If the boat capsizes for whatever reason, hanging onto the cooler can save your life, especially if you did not have time to don your lifejacket. I would suspect that certain coolers are able to keep only a person of certain weight afloat.....that's what you need to test: how many pounds each cooler can keep afloat (weights hanging over the side of a cooler while in a lake).
Would love to see the pelican cooler in this test!!
I hunt a lot, and you have to have good coolers to hold your food for several days. I’ve had Igloo and Rtic coolers before and they were ok, but usually required a pretty long trip into town for a re-up on ice about halfway through the trip (day 2). Over the last few years I have bought a couple Yeti 45’s, and it’s not even close. I hate the cost, but they work so much better. I can hunt for 3 days and there’s usually still ice on day 4 when I leave.
The styrofoam gas station Pabst Blue Ribbon coolers are what I buy. They effectively keep things cold for 8-12 hrs. After that, I just want to go home and get away from the obnoxious turds who brag about their expensive coolers. Besides, warm beer doesn't scare me in the slightest.
Hahahaha
You can get Rtic. Pelican or a Cabela's coolers for less money and do the same if not better. Pelican cooler's are the only actually bear proof. Cooler's with their latches !!!
You should try a Cabelas cooler, better than the Yeti at a much better price.... I own both brands in similar sizes and the Cabelas will hold ice 2 to 3 days longer consistently.
BTW, the Yeti 45 does not actually hold 45 quarts, its really like 35 which may give it an advantage if loaded up with the same amount of cans and ice since it will have less air space. They do their numbering kind of weird, it has to do with the external dimensions compared to other brands not actual liquid capacity, they mention this in their FAQ's on the website.
I wonder what company builds the cooler for Cabelas? They don't build it themselves. So its probably made by the same company who builds one of these in the video
One of the best insulators for heat (cold is the lack of heat) is non- moving air. That is why more insulation (which conducts heat) isn't always better.
EVERY YETI is made in Chinese sweatshops, where 10 year olds are abused. At least IGLOO makes a huge amount of their coolers in the USA. Since I have a choice here, I will buy American….
I think Igloo is made in Katy, Tx!! Or between Katy and Brookshire Tx. They have deals in Saturday at 2 pm if you can make it out there. I think RTIC in made is Cypress Tx. They have a really cool shop also
omg safety first and then the first glimpse he's wearing sandals too LOL. what this has taught me so far (about to see the cut reveal) is that YETI *isn't* just a gimmick company. i thought they might be on account of beautiful designs and all the colors, plus all the instagram-level hype.
i do own 2 14oz coffee mug style travel mugs and use them constantly. (otherwise i'm one of those that has to excessively reheat coffee as i don't chug it in one blast.). and, one of those tall water things cuz my mom wasn't using it. score!! this sh*t's expensive! anyway, BUILD QUALITY and well thought out design like the lid systems.... just always really impressed by that. i guess it's a sign of a good brand vs just marketing. tho..... perhaps they're a brand that's managed to do both.
(still can't get over a mug being $35+. managed to get mine on sale or REI bucks or something. the dark green i had to hunt down as it was discontinued.)
The BMX is a Yeti KILLER! I've had ice hold for 6 days in the summer when I leave the drain plug open to prevent soggy food. $100 vs. $325 is a clear no-brainer. Buy 3 BMX coolers and slay one yeti. YETI coolers are for showboats with too much money in their pockets.
does Yeti make a larger one that would hold a 5'6" 140lb body? asking for a friend
Brilliant marketing. Use thicker plastic walls, fill with denser foam, sell for 5x the price to gullible consumers.
So you have a problem with a product using higher quality materials??
@@rediron44 Yeti could sell their version of a 48qt ice chest for $45 and still make a 100% profit. So you tell me. Is it worth $220?
@@blackhawk7r221 anyone can sell anything for a fraction of the price and still make profit but they don’t. It’s called capitalism. Look at the price of pick up trucks and SUVs. Approaching close to six digits. You’re telling me Ford and GM couldn’t sell it for a fraction of the price and still make profit? They don’t buy people still buy them.
Also, this guy put a wire through the seal. It's a useless test. It proves the yeti is best with a wire in the seal. But maybe without the wire all the results could be different.
@@rediron44see comment above.
People cry about yeti but they are the best looking coolers and work well. I got one on sale in tan and like it. I did have an issue with the lid being a little warped and yeti swapped it out for a new one no questions asked. Good service.
This is a Yeti commercial. Yeti came out of your mouth way more than the others and Yeti got most of the screen time.
Not to mention he avoided saying or showing RTIC as much as possible. He didn’t even cut it in half.
I am very happy with the Igloo Max Cold I picked up at Academy for 65 buks.
I can 3 days of ice life depending on how often you open it.
Yeti is just overpriced though, they could cut their prices and open up their availability to more of the market and probably make more than they are now and at that point probably put other brands out of business and take that for themselves.
I was a faithful Yeti-ite until my Rambler tumbler that is 8 months old suddenly stopped keeping ice! It would melt within 2 hours!! So i let them know and they basically refused to do anything about it! So Im trying out an RTIC tumbler. It was ablout half as much... see how it does.
Sounds like a paid review
Definitely. Many swear by the RTIC. And what makes it so much heavier? Thicker plastic walls, more foam insulation? Something sounds very fishy to me... The fact he didn't cut it open was moronic. Why wouldn't you, especially to find out the weight giant difference??? Definitely sounds paid.
I have 4 different rtic hard coolers. My brother has all yeti coolers and for some reason my rtic coolers hold ice longer than his yeti coolers and mine were way cheaper and they seem to weigh the same. I think this fella may be benefiting from this. They are the same coolers except things tend to cost less with rtic.
Sorry, maybe it's just the sentimental value, but the best cooler I've found is an old Igloo with metal hardware that my grandparents bought long ago. Over 40 years of camping and parties, and still going strong. That and my grandfather's Stanley thermos are two of the best everyday examples of "they don't make them like they used to".
Yetti is basically rtic with a 75% markup
I respectfully disagree. I have both, and I take them on hunting trips that usually last about 4-ish days, sometimes 5. This is in Rocksprings, Texas and it hits close to 115 degrees in the summer. I prep my coolers by filling with ice the day before a trip and getting the actual cooler itself as cold as possible and I let them sit inside the house in the A/C, then I pack my food with fresh ice and try not to open the coolers very often. My RTIC 52 is generally about out of ice at the end of day 2 or early on day 3. My Yeti coolers will still have plenty of ice for the trip home. I’ve done this same trip many, many times with the same results. I always use the RTIC to pack the stuff that doesn’t require the ice as much. Butter, milk, creamer, OJ, etc. Meat and canned drinks always go in the Yetis. Just my experience, YMMV. 🍻
Yeah, but the Yeti is ridiculously expensive. I wonder if you could make the Igloo work as well by gluing a 1/2" thick piece of styrofoam to the bottom, and squirting some RTV around the gap between the lid and the body?
The yeti is overpriced and way over hype. You can get the same results with coolers five times cheaper
I cut a YETI in half and was shocked to find… Insulation!!! Bum Bum Bummmmmmmmmm!
100% CLICKBAIT. He makes it look like there's a big problem with the Yeti from the picture on the video and when you get into it you find out it's just ANOTHER cooler review. I wish YouTUbers would stop using this tired old trick to get you to click the video.
Bastards gotta make money.
I wish people would learn to downvote more
How about you try to create a video that doesn’t conform to what the algorithm wants and see how well it does
I personally bought a Cordova cooler and absolutely love it. It does what I need it to do on our long drives and soccer tournaments in the hot summers
YETI IS anti-Second Amendment 😡😡😡😡😡😡
Shrugs in British 💁🏼♂️
I noticed you didn't want to hurt your sponsor by not including Engle coolers which are cheaper and it perform yetis
I bought my husband two Yeti Tundras different sizes for Christmas and birthday and he loves them. Saved a whole lot of $$$ when my freezer died and my coolers kept my meat for daze!!!
Little tear in my eye seeing that Yeti get destroyed 😭😭
Yeti uses a better foam formula. I am a foam formulator, I don't know specifics because I don't work in insulation foam but I know the guy that formulates for yeti and he's a master
For your next video I hope you'll return them all for warranty replacement and let us know how that goes.
Where did you get that cool helmet? It's got some sort of invisible eye and breathing protection!
I bought a "knock off" from Aldi and it performs quite well. I would love to cut it in half and see what its features are, but, alas, it's my go to cooler.
Hi! I love your videos! Would you mind telling me how thick exactly the yeti's plastic wall is? That would be very helpful, thank you!
Cool learning about fancy new stuff even though I'm happy using a free old-fashioned cooler and a free old down blanket wrapped all the way around that. I can be on the road with a ton of food in there camping with my boys and 10# of ice can last 3-5 days, depending on ambient temps. Would be clumsy in a canoe, but just fine in the SUV. :-)
I’ve probably spent $3500 with RTIC in the last ~5 years with various giveaways, contests, fundraising and non-profit gifts (I love their price point and customer service). I have their soft coolers and bags. Our families love them. Ha. Funny story….I won a Yeti 45 at work during a sales contest. Thanks for the video!
I’d be curious of a RTIC 52 Lightweight Review. Thanks for the video!
A couple of things you could have done, the amount of force to open the lid, a fishing scale would have done the job. And Another one would be to get a sample of the foam from each one the same size and see if there is a difference in the weight
Did you place the probe at the same location on all coolers?
I have a Lifetime rotomolded cooler and feel they are the best in the market. Low cost. Ice for a week or more. Solid secure latches. Big knob for the drain. Rope handles. Its never failed me.
What is the cooler durability when dropped and stuff still in them? 4:18
A sales person told me right out.. its a status symbol thing.. Yeah they work very well. There is something unique then about the formulation or the matrix design of the insulation material that Yeti fills it with . The foam possiblely has substantially way more microscopic air pockets in it.. ??? 😊