Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This cooler kept my food cold for 6 days in hot weather. I'm extremely impressed. The weather was 85-90 degrees every day, and I was worried that my food wouldn't stay cold for the 6-day trip. However, this cooler worked like a champ. There were still chunks of ice in there on day 5. When I got home last night (day 6), there wasn't any actual ice left, but the last of it must have melted very recently because the water was still ice cold. And the last of my food (in zip lock bags) was still nice and cold. I couldn't be happier with this cooler. I used a few tricks to help make the ice last the longest: 1) I used block ice. I found a local ice company that sells block ice (grocery stores don't seem to sell the block ice anymore). I put three 10-lb blocks in there, and that fit perfectly across the bottom. Then I put in my food, etc, and topped it off with some loose chopped ice to fill in the gaps. But the block ice makes a big difference. It lasts a lot longer. 2) I used my home refrigerator to pre-chill everything that I put in there. You can lose a lot of ice just doing the initial chilling of warm food and drinks, so it really helps to only put things into the cooler that are already cold. This also means I wasn't adding new warm drinks to the cooler during the trip. So, most of the time I was drinking un-chilled water, which isn't ideal, but that's the trade-off for trying to maximize how long the ice would last for my food. 3) I made a point to frequency and duration of the times when I opened the cooler. If you're opening your cooler and digging around in there every hour, that's going to melt the ice a lot faster. I only opened the cooler 2-3 times a day. 4) Of course, as always, you want to leave the water in there as the ice is melting. Don't drain the water! Keep all your food in zip-lock bags so it can sit in water and still be fine. The cold water helps keep the remaining ice from melting, better than air can.