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The best cooler backpacks are your secret weapon to enjoyable, dare I say luxurious, day experiences in the outdoors. If you get the best backpack cooler that fits your needs you can bring your most favorite foods and drinks to the most beautiful places. The right one is a best of both worlds piece of gear since they can comfortably let you get off the beaten track and still enjoy the comforts of home when you get there. I tested six of the best backpack coolers on the market to help you choose the one that will work best for you.
The Test: I really sucked the marrow out of this last summer and these coolers came along for the party. They came with on seven different rafting day trips on the Rogue River and one overnight rafting trip on the Klamath River. They camped with me and my family for 12 nights spread out between the far northern California coast, rivers in California and Oregon, and in the redwoods. They sat on beaches in California and Oregon and got hiked down dozens of trails to magical lunch spots.
The 7 Best Backpack Coolers
Best for picnics: Hydro Flask 20L Carry Out Soft Cooler Pack
Pros: Cuuuute!
Cons: Gets dirty as hell
Price: $120
The Hydro Flask 20L Carry Out was a killer pack for the softer sides of this test. I do not mean to say that disparagingly - its lightly padded back panel, stretchy exterior pockets, solid backpack straps, and huge easy to open/close structured clam shell opening made it ideal for a ½ mile hike to picnic my family took to the Redwoods in August. This affordable backpack cooler has a large stretchy mesh pocket in the front that allowed me to shove in all kinds of dry snacks like nuts and bars which made this an ideal lunch backpack. While its price point made it the best budget pack of the bunch, it got its ass positively kicked, unfortunately, on a rafting trip earlier in the summer. It does not feature a waterproof zipper and it leaked on the way to the put in. It also got crushed under a hard cooler in the drive to the put in and filthy while packing the boat and it, aesthetically at least, never really recovered from the dirtiness and folds in the material. To be fair to Hydro Flask, it comes in a black color that would have fared much better.
Best for marching into hell: Yeti Hopper M20 Soft Cooler Backpack
Pros: Lives up to Yeti standards of burl
Cons: Pricey
Price: $325
We beat the living hell out of the M20 last summer and it didn’t look worse for the wear or have any single button, clip, or folding bit of top look worse for the wear at the end of it. I found myself intentionally abusing the M20 more than the others—throwing it out of the back of my truck onto concrete, yarding on straps holding it into the raft—and it just wasn’t phased. It received top marks for ice retention and coldness (second to the RTIC backpack soft cooler below) and had some extremely smart design details that we appreciated like six tie hearty gear loops in the front that made it a breeze to tie into rafts and to the top of a Jed Clampit pile of extra gear in the back of my truck, as well as the impressively leak proof roll top lid.
Best for the most serious hydrators: Camelbak ChillBak Pack 30 Soft Cooler and Hydration Center
Pros: Double duty hydration bladder and cooler
Cons: Big footprint
Price: $325
I’m not going to lie, when I first received the ChillBak, I rolled my eyes at the idea of coupling a 6L hydration pack along with a 30L Soft Cooler. What kind of portmanteau would I use to describe it to friends? A coolerbladder? A hyrationinsulation? My snarkiness subsided over the course of an epic eight hour beach day at a secluded beach with a technical half mile hike in completely fueled by the contents of this pack. The fact that I could pack enough water (my family of three shared the nozzle for hydration purposes) for use to drink to our hearts content for a full day while keeping four beers, two La Croixs, and a bountiful charcuterie boards worth of snacks ice cold made me a believer in this system. This is the absolute best for hauling the most sheer stuff on this list thanks to its hydration system, size, chest strap, padded shoulder straps, and very comfy waist pad. It took up a lot of real estate in the raft, so it didn’t work well as a standalone beer cooler but was a killer hauler nonetheless.
Best for Rafting: ICEMULE Pro XL Insulated Backpack Cooler
Pros: Very malleable in a raft or other tight spaces
Cons: Not as much insulation as the rest
Price: $145
The Pro XL fit organically into the midst of my raft piled high with gear for a multi-day trip on the Klamath, barely distinguishable from the drybags around it. The fact that the ICEMULE Pro was basically a souped up drybag made it so easy to integrate into both a raft set up as well as into an overpacked truck full of car camping gear. The roll top proved completely spill proof and even though the insulation was on the lighter side of the coolers in this test, it had killer cold retention and was still plenty capable of delivering an ice cold root beer at the end of a full day rafting where the high was 98-degrees. The PVC exterior was also hearty as hell which added to its chops as a raft-worthy cooler pack and would likely be the best value on this list since it will likely last for many years at a low price point.
Best for the coldest beers: RTIC Backpack Cooler
Pros: Incredible cool retention for soft cooler
Cons: Some delamination in extreme heat
Price: $180
The RTIC Backpack Cooler is a freaking hoss and reliably delivered the coldest drinks and most edible cheese throughout three plus day camping trips—making it the best soft cooler for the long haul and our go-to to sub in for a hard cooler and the best camping cooler of the bunch. The waterproof zippers proved fully spill proof after it spent the night on its side with melted ice—there was not a drop of water around this soft sided cooler. The heavy duty PVC exterior and ample insulation really made it perform like a cooler twice its price when living on a raft or in a campsite with nothing more than an ice pack cooling it down. The one downside is that I experienced some delamination after I left this cooler in my backyard through a heatwave where temps were triple digits for three days in a row.
Best for having all the accessories: Pelican Dayventure Backpack Cooler
Pros: Incredibly feature-rich and cool as hell looking
Cons: Dual chamber system takes getting used to
Price: $290 $219
The Pelican Dayventure is an incredibly well built cooler backpack. It was absolutely packed with usability details and we loved pretty much every one of them. First off - the Dayventure looks the most like a badass well structured regular backpack than any of the others on this list and it sat like one on our backs during a full day of hiking through Damnation Creek trail in Crescent City, CA thanks to smart details like the perfectly padded straps. This all day comfort, coupled with an awesome closing exterior pocket that fit all of my wife and my necessities like a phone, wallet, and small sunscreen, made this my favorite pack for long days out. The base of the pack is heavily insulated and zips open separate from the roll top, less insulated top of the pack. This proved very efficient for keeping drinks super cold while giving less cooling effort to the sandwiches, but it took us about half a dozen uses to get used to getting the bottom compartment open without awkwardly spilling from the top.
Best for the best value: REI Co-op Cool Trail Split Pack
Pros: Very efficient for solo adventures or a date
Cons: Smallest cooler compartment
Price: $85
Please excuse my Robocop reference, but my notes on the Split Pack had the same cadence as that movie’s banger 80s tagline: part backpack, part cooler - all trailready. While the Dayventure also split the pack into two compartments, both worked as coolers—the Split Pack really differentiated with this backpack on top cooler on the bottom design. In good news, it had s sturdy, fully enclosed, pocket to keep sandy towels and my kids wet bathing suit separate from the leftovers of our lunch during the ¼ mile hike out for a remote beach picnic. In not-so-good (specific to my snack focused family) news, it couldn’t hold more than a light lunch’s worth of food in there with an ice pack. If you are purchasing this as an individual or for a couple, the cooler compartment will serve you well, but think of sizing up to one of the other coolers on this list if buying for a family.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I use a backpack cooler for?
Backpack coolers are best for day trips because they are super portable but don’t have the thermoregulation chops of a hard sided cooler. If you need a cooler to retain ice for a whole weekend or keep your food cold for a longer trip, you would be better served with a hard cooler.
How durable are backpack coolers?
Like any piece of gear, backpack coolers run the gamut when it comes to durability. Traditionally soft coolers were super flimsy but that has changed in the past decade with some genuinely burly soft backpack coolers coming to market like everything from Yeti as well as the surprisingly durable (for the price) ICEMULE.
Should I use a disposable cooler?
No. Never. Please don’t use a disposable cooler. They are one of those uniquely terrible items that doesn’t work well (a disposable cooler will hold on to ice significantly less well than any cooler bag on this list), is wasteful, and actually doesn’t make sense financially. If you have to buy five of those things you have spent as much money as the Carry-Out cooler above.
Published 10-01-2024
Updated 10-08-2024
