The Best Soft Cooler -Our pick

Transcription

1 The Best Soft Cooler -Our pick The Sweethome The AO Canvas Series 24-Pack Soft Cooler is our pick for its decent insulation, good construction, reasonable price, and flexible, easy-to-carry design. The cheaper models we tested all performed significantly worse than this AO cooler, and none of the more expensive models performed well enough to warrant their significant increase in price. Over 24 hours, the cooler produced 8 cups of meltwater from 9 pounds of ice, a measurement that was on par with the best coolers in our test. But at only $60, this model is at least $20 cheaper than the comparable performers in our test (and some others cost twice as much, or more). Its nearest competitor was our previous pick for this guide, an $80 model by Polar Bear still an excellent cooler, if you can find it but the AO cooler s more consistent availability, better price, and almost equivalent performance make it our top choice.

2 Our pick s materials were also comparable to those of the best coolers we found. It s called the Canvas Series, but it isn t actually made from canvas at all. It has a 600- denier nylon exterior that s very similar to that of the Polar Bear cooler. While not fully waterproof from the outside, the Canvas Series is water-resistant. I took a broad piece of the exterior nylon fabric and soaked it under a spray faucet for several minutes until the top of the material had begun to absorb some water. During this test, the underside of the fabric remained dry throughout. Moving to the inside, there s an internal liner of reflective Mylar, which also doubles as a moisture barrier between the nylon and the foam insulation that sits behind it. The cooler s best design feature is one you will also find in pricier Polar Bear and StrongBagsmodels. When it s open, the bag stands erect like a grocery bag, which provides easy access for loading and unloading. Closed, the top of the bag zips across the middle with two YKK #8 zippers (the largest, and often considered the most reliable, zipper manufacturer in the world) and folds down on either side, compressing the bag into a rectangular brick. This shape allows for all sides of the bag to have equal insulation coverage when closed a feature many cheaper soft coolers lack. The insulation itself is a 0.75-inch layer of foam. Exactly what kind of foam is difficult to say. On several videos and in conversations with us, AO Coolers has claimed that it uses closed-cell foam in its products. But the feel of the foam insulation, which is spongy and pliable, gives it away as most likely open cell. Because of the insulation s feel, I suspected that our AO Coolers pick had a slightly less dense open-cell foam than what s found in the standard Polar Bear cooler. I was so convinced, in fact, that I took one of AO Coolers s products and cut it open with a safety razor to take a closer

3 look. (I also managed to cut myself quite deeply during the process because it was late and I was tired and ended up bleeding on most of the foam. Turns out it is open cell, and let s just say it s quite absorbent.) Let s talk about heat, insulation, and polyurethane foam for a minute. Heat, remember, can be transferred three different ways: conduction, convection, and radiation. Conduction is the transfer of heat through a solid (like when a spoon becomes hot after sitting in soup), convection is the transfer of heat through a fluid (including air), and radiation is the emission of electromagnetic energy (like sunlight). Different types of insulation work in different ways to minimize heat transfer into the cooler. Open- and closed-cell foam act as insulators to reduce heat conduction, while fabrics and liners like coated polyurethane and reflective Mylar create a radiant barrier that reduces and reflects heat radiation. Closed-cell foam is considered a better insulator than open-cell foam because the tiny bubbles of gas in closed-cell foam are independent from another. Air bubbles that do not share cell walls, in effect being insulated from one another, are better at reducing the overall transfer of heat through the foam. Closed-cell foam is also much more expensive to produce than open-cell foam. The resulting product is strong, very rigid feeling and typically weighs more than 1.7 pound per cubic foot with greater than 90 percent of its air cells closed to one another. Closed-cell foam is also waterimpermeable an ideal material for surfers wetsuits. In contrast, open-cell foam is permeable to air and water like a sponge (which is why it is used in foam pillows, as it s squishier and it breathes). But open-cell s ability to insulate is greatly diminished when wet, since water permeates all of the open space

4 and acts as a conductor of heat. In open-cell foam, the majority of bubbles (greater than 50 percent) share walls with one another. These foams are light and easy to compress, weighing around 0.5 pound per cubic foot. According to our testing, over a long enough period of time, closed-cell foam will keep things cool for longer. But in the 24- to 48-hour range, there doesn t seem to be a huge difference between using three-quarter inch of closed- or open-cell foam in a cooler. Except for cost, of course. Everyone wants to claim that they use closed-cell foam in their coolers. And, after hours of research, you ll have to trust us that there s a lot of gray area in what is advertised as closed-cell foam and what actually is. If you re wondering what kind of foam your cooler has, a good rule of thumb is to try and squeeze the foam together with your fingers. If your fingers can compress the foam more than 75 percent down, then you re probably dealing with open-cell foam. If the foam feels denser than that and can t be compressed very much at all, you ve probably got your hands wrapped around closed-cell foam. The AO cooler s insulation is surrounded internally in a 0.7-millimeter lining of flexible polyvinyl carbonate (PVC). This PVC lining is a softer, more pliable material than what found in other coolers. It s also easier than some others to clean, but we found during testing, and especially after the cooler was left open and empty in the sun, that the liner sometimes became almost too pliable. Polar Bear, for instance, has gone a different direction with its liner, using a more rigid thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), which feels more hardy to the touch, even after time in the sun.

5 AO Coolers explained to us that it purposefully designed a more pliable liner to make it easier to clean and to resist puncture, and provided us with testing notes to back up the claim. AO tests its lining materials in a series of destructive ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) procedures run by an independent lab. We ve reviewed these test notes and the the lining resisted roughly 50 pound force of puncture force and 25 pound force of shear strength at inch, which is roughly a point about the size of the head of a pencil. Though we weren t able to re-create this test ourselves without expensive machinery, the AO cooler s lining did stand up to an awful lot of abuse at the hands of our testers. While I wouldn t put a crushed, jaggededged can into this (or any) soft cooler, AO Coolers s linings are tough enough to resist most damage, except maybe an unlucky direct puncture. Last year, we noted that the AO cooler s lining had uneven seems that led to jutting corners. That has all been redesigned now, with an internally welded seem that meets at a T shape in the corner of the bag. All in all, it s a much stronger corner than we saw last time.