By Kit Dillon
Kit Dillon is a writer focused on bags and travel gear. He has worked for Wirecutter for a decade and lost count of the number of bags he has tested.
Living in Hawaii, I spend a remarkable amount of time negotiating with the sun.
Every grocery errand, beach trip, or lunch run requires some kind of cooler, if I want any hope of returning home without spoiled milk. And with my recent catering side gig, I’ve needed a cooler that can keep food fresh for hours as I traverse the fickle traffic patterns of Oahu’s north shore. Thankfully, I’ve found a trusted sidekick in the RTIC 52 Ultra-Light Cooler, which is now our pick for best hard cooler in our guide to the best coolers.
As I hauled dinners through the beating sun from Waialua to Laie, it occurred to me that the cooler giants of yesteryear are fading. In retrospect, the signs were obvious.
Brands like Igloo and Coleman, which popularized the personal cooler in the mid-’50s, have been in decline for nearly two decades now (though both brands still make coolers we recommend in our guide).
This is not an unfamiliar cycle: A trusted legacy brand defines an era and then slowly, sometimes subtly, makes compromises to its designs, shaving away pennies in expense and fractions in performance until there’s no more hiding the truth—that things no longer work like they used to.
Our pick
Better insulated and less expensive than the competition, this hard cooler keeps things ice cold for five days, and the well-designed drain ports make it easy to clean.
A weight off my shoulders
Though most of the new, flashy cooler brands, like Yeti and Bison, are extremely well built, they’re also heavy to sometimes extremely heavy (and that’s before you load them with ice and sundries).
The RTIC Ultra-Light has over 2 inches of closed-cell foam (compared with Yeti’s and Bison’s 3 inches) around its sides, while also being a third to half the weight of other similarly sized roto-molded coolers. This cooler keeps the traditional 3 inches of foam in the lid and weighs just 21.5 pounds (in the 52-quart design).
In our tests, the RTIC Ultra-Light keeps things ice cold for five days, if it’s kept in the shade. That’s plenty of time to get anyone through a weekend of festivities or a long trip to the beach. This cooler, especially the 22-quart size, is the heir apparent to the classic camping cooler: a lightweight, tough-as-nails, well-insulated box that you can also use as a chair by the fire.
I’ve used my RTIC Ultra-Light for three years now. I have dragged it down cliffs and across long stretches of park paths, so it’s not a piece of gear that I’m particularly kind to. And that’s what I love most about it. Through it all, this cooler is more than a sidekick—it’s a survivor.
Packing a cooler like a pro
While the RTIC Ultra-Light is a workhorse any way you slice it, packing a cooler the right way further ensures your food’s longevity; we have another piece with some great, in-depth packing advice. The main takeaways: Begin with a large enough cooler to maintain a 2:1 ice-to-stuff ratio, and embrace the pre-chill. Mix some ice with water a few hours before you need to use your cooler.
Starting with a chilled temperature means your actual perishables will last longer over time. When you’re ready to start packing, label and repackage your food in leak-proof packaging. Then, line the bottom of your cooler with ice or ice packs, and load the coldest, or frozen, things at the bottom, working your way up to the most delicate foods at the top.
With so many things seeming to slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) degrade in front of our eyes, the RTIC Ultra-Light is a product—a simple object that does its job and does it well—that restores our faith in the stuff around us. Somewhere, somebody gave a damn, and, for them, it began with making an excellent cooler.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Catherine Kast.
Meet your guide
Kit Dillon is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. He was previously an app developer, oil derrick inspector, public-radio archivist, and sandwich shop owner. He has written for Popular Science, The Awl, and the New York Observer, among others. When called on, he can still make a mean sandwich.