Unless You Are a Hardcore Camper, This Is the Only Yeti Cooler You Need

Oct 12, 2023

It's still rugged and ready.

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Food & Wine / Yeti

I won't lie, I got caught up in the Yeti-fever. It felt like all of a sudden I started seeing the brand's famous hard coolers everywhere. Maybe I watched one too many commercials of it being mauled by a grizzly bear and remaining intact — a feature the brand is famous for.

I can't say when I caught the bug, but I can say for sure that when I bought one, I thought I’d use it everywhere and all the time. It turns out, I used it about once in the span of a year. But it wasn't the cooler's fault. I had just purchased the wrong one. Now, instead of the hard cooler, I think everyone needs to get the brand's soft cooler.

Yeti

To buy: Yeti Hopper Flip 12 Soft Cooler, $250 at yeti.com

The one problem with Yeti's products, in my experience, is that they are so well-designed, most of us will never really need something quite like it. That's what I found to be true about the Roadie 24 hard cooler. I brought it camping, which it was great for since it has more room for food and functions as a great seat as well, but other than that one camping trip, I didn't use it for the rest of the year.

The same can't be said about the soft cooler, which is essentially an over-sized lunchbox. I have the 12-liter option, which is the perfect in-between, in my opinion. It can hold 24 cans of beer (so four six packs) or 16 pounds of ice. While it's great for bringing to the park filled with snacks and drinks, it's also a helpful addition to my grocery shopping routine. If seafood is on the menu during the week, you can bet that this is in the trunk of my car to ensure that my salmon doesn't spoil on the way home in the Texas heat.

Unlike the hard cooler, it's incredibly lightweight when it's empty (weighing only 3 pounds) so it's easy to carry to the park and back, and it even has a nice cushioned shoulder strap. But one of my favorite things is the zipper. I know it might sound strange, but it's sturdy enough that I don't have to worry about any ice leaking on accident. It's definitely the toughest zipper I’ve ever used.

This is all to say, the Yeti Hopper is a masterpiece of a cooler. For those of us who aren't doing crawfish boils every weekend or going on week long camping trips, this is the only cooler you’ll ever need. Trust me, I’ve tried both.

At the time of publishing, the price was $250.