re: RTIC cooler sale

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The two bags of ice with two cases of beer filled the 65 cooler 75%. The ice wont make it to the 4 full day mark in 70 degree weather. Actually, the beer was probably undrinkable temp at the 80hr mark. My Igloo has same performance in 90 degree temps for 1/3 of the price of the RTIC on sale.

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But did you precool it?

Well, finally got around to testing my 30 softpak and it leaks when turned upside down. Anyone else have the same issue?

Not sure what happened, but the sportid for the 64o, bottles went up from $4.99 to $9.99 Me shipping for such a cheap part was $6.99...They were out of these when I ordered my 20 65 and bottle...
I emailed the. My order # and asked if they could help out on shipping since I bought all the other items but could not order the sport lid due to it being out of stock...They said absolutely not...
Not stellar customer service IMO

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that's because these things will not perform their advertised ability on a consistent basis, and it's fine. anyone that buys it expecting to be perfect needs to take a step back and realize it's an ice chest.

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I got a 20 for Christmas, and I've made it my mission to figure out how these things work, because I was about to send it back because it didn't seem to perform any better than any other cooler. The more I've looked into it, I've found that they will absolutely work as advertised under perfect conditions. Those conditions are:

1. The cooler is pre-cooled for 24 hours (most important).
2. The ice you put into the cooler is "fresh" ice. If you grab a bag from the store that is "wet," it may not work as well.
3. The stuff you put in with the ice is already cold.

It's not a refrigerator, it's an insulated cooler. That means it holds whatever temp you put into it. You can put warm stuff in your fridge, and it'll cool it. But if you dump a bunch of ice and warm cans into the cooler, they are going to reach a midpoint, and that's the temp it will hold. After doing the steps above, mine held 20 lbs of ice for 7 days, with me opening to check on it twice a day.

Without doing all of the above steps (but still precooling, I noticed that about 1/4 of the ice would melt in the first 24 hours. This seems discouraging because it doesn't seem like it's doing any better than a cheap cooler, but after that first day, it locked down and held strong. That's where it really outperforms a regular cooler. By day 4, it was mostly water, but the water was COLD. I pulled a beer out of the water and compared it to one in the fridge, and the one from the water was colder.

Overall, the whole seven day thing should have an asterisk beside it. You absolutely can accomplish it, but most everyday uses for the cooler make it really hard, if not impossible. For a one day use, it won't perform really any better than anything else. I'm definitely keeping mine, though. It's by far and away the most sturdy cooler that I've ever owned, and it's nice knowing that I can make it perform at 100% if I'd ever need to.

Wensday at 1 I put 24 pounds of ice in my 45. Have about half the ice left. It's stayed in the back of my truck for the test. Won't be able to see how long it goes because I need it for a crawfish boil tonight.

I have a hard 20 and put about 10 bottles of water and filled it with ice on Tuesday morning. I keep it in my trunk and grab a water or 2 a day and this morning it still has a few ice cubes but the water is cold. This is somewhere in the 2-3x performance range (in days) of my little igloo. Worth the 100 bucks for sure.

Same thing happened to me with the feet of RTIC 20. Debating on returning and getting the new design??? How much different do y'all think the design will be?

The feet haven't popped off of my 20...yet. The only sweating on mine has been a small ring around the drain plug. I have noticed that the seal doesn't get vacuumed shut like my yeti always did.

Quality Update: Took my new RTIC 65 fishing this weekend. One of the feet popped off. I just knocked it back in. Super glue should do the trick. Kinda lame but oh well.

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have noticed that the seal doesn't get vacuumed shut like my yeti always did.

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My 45 vacuums every time I open it it seems. My 65 not so much.