Anyone with any experience with this brand? Said rotomolded.
https://rticoutdoors.com/52-QT-Ultra...Grey-Cool-Grey
Anyone with any experience with this brand? Said rotomolded.
https://rticoutdoors.com/52-QT-Ultra...Grey-Cool-Grey
Their UL series is injection molded.Originally Posted by JCN
Anyone with any experience with this brand? Said rotomolded.
https://rticoutdoors.com/52-QT-Ultra...Grey-Cool-Grey
Injection molded isn't necessarily less durable than rotomolded. Depends entirely on the design of the parts, material, and wall thickness.
Dimensionally injection molding is superior and also has a plethora of resin options with vastly different mechanical properties. In theory it allows better sealing(tighter tolerances) less sensitivity to heat(better materials), and less mass(better materials).
I have experience with both Canyon and Big Frig, just to give you more brands to put in the mix if you want to try to catch a sale. Performance is good, price is in line with the other rotos but IMO it seems like the lesser-known-than-Yeti brands realized they don't have to compete on price as much as they did 5 years ago and so there's a lot of parity.
I wonder if we haven’t reached a point of them all being relatively equal and the deciding factor being about aesthetics, price, handle placement, size, etc.
Size, in particular, seems all over the place and I could see a situation where one has X width to fit within (like between canoe rails), or Y height to fit under (like a tonneau cover), which would be a stronger limiting factor than one keeping ice for 72 hours vs another going 74.
To whit, re: accessories, these are pretty neat
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Engel is from where I live. As such, you see a LOT of them here. Also as a Florida native I like to buy from Florida companies (I still drink from plastic Tervis, not metal Yetis). I have one of their bait boxes I use as a bbq cambro. That said, is likely choose US-made over Florida-based and I believe Engel are offshore manufactured.
Curious to know if the testing of their rotomolded cookers (presuming you mean those, not the bait box) revealed some catastrophic failure or major weak point, or just didn't do as well as the others in one criteria or another?
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That was my takeaway from the article I linked in this post.
They never mention "keeps stuff cold" as a differentiator. It's always "this one costs too much, this one has janky handles/hinges, this other one is shaped weird and is tough to fit in the trunk of a car."
I've long been a huge fan of Wirecutter, and have been happy with just about every purchase I've made based on their recommendations. I *do* think that they sometimes miss the mark on outdoor gear (and maybe should stick to their geek roots).
there are quite a few Youtube ice-tests out there. One example that appears to keep doing "tests" from time to time. But they rate the "days with ice" measuring by days which makes it harder to figure out exactly how different they might be. I say "test" in quotes because they can't even be bothered to control for overall cooler volume. but even these guys point out that their Orion is the "best overall" but sucks for actual use (lack of lid hand-hold, and I believe it's heavier than the others at 36lbs for a 65 quart) which leads me to think that there's a ratio of usabiliyt:retention where as one goes up the other can be negatively impacted. Clearly weight increases as ice-retention increases, but also things like that hand-hold in the lid would lead to a reduced thermal barrier in that location.
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Its crazy to me what these things weigh? There isn't much room inside considering the outside dimensions of the cooler. Do you take weight into consideration?
We had a prior thread on this in 2017 predicated on testing that the Ozark Trail (Walmart house brand) Roto molded coolers worked better than Yetis.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....highlight=YETI
Based on my experience with Rtic, Coho and Magellan (Academy house brand) I would agree that they all cool pretty much the same and price features accessories are the main differentiators.
Of course you do, but sometimes it also doesn't matter, or it's a factor of the requirements of the equipment. If you are going on an 8-day kayaking trip and you need (want?) cold items, you're probably not moving the cooler much AND there really isn't another way to keep your stuff cold for that long.
The whole initial Yeti craze (and Engel before them, if you believe the marketing) was based around a cooler that was insulated well enough to keep stuff cold all day at a minimum (and sometimes longer) AND you could stand on it. In neither of those cases is "picking the thing up and trucking it all around over and over again" part of the equation.
In my particular use-case, I want something I can keep ice (and only ice) in for several days. Only opening the lid at most 1x/day to get ice to feed other (possibly smaller) coolers to keep food cold and/or use in drinks.
One of the things I've seen in a lot of testing is that if you load up your Coleman and your Yeti with ice and drinks and then spend all day going in and out of it retrieving said drinks, getting left open by kids, etc. it really doesn't matter how thick the walls are, you're going to blow through ice.
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