The best cool boxes and bags for 2024: keep your camping trip chilled with our top expert picks

We already know what you’re thinking: ‘This thing had better be seriously good if you’re expecting us to spend £450 on it’. Yeti have come a long way in a short space of time, seemingly becoming the must-have brand for everything from drinks bottles and travel mugs to cool boxes and even camping chairs. We’ve had our hands on quite a lot of their products in the last couple of years and can confirm it’s all manufactured to incredibly high standards and feels built to last for many years of adventures.

The Roadie is a prime example. It comes in three sizes (24L, 48L, 60L) and the one we really wanted to test drive this summer was the rolling 48-litre version. So far we’ve taken it on camping trips, to festivals, and even to a couple of kids’ football tournaments in seriously hot conditions. Not only has it performed brilliantly on each occasion, but it also has that ‘wow factor’ where every person who comes into contact with it wants to know where they can get one from.

It takes up a fair chunk of boot space so that’s worth remembering before buying, but the flipside is that you can fit loads of food and drink (including most standard wine bottles) inside it. We used the Yeti Roadie 48 for a long weekend of camping and after loading it with four ice blocks at the start of the trip, everything was still cool when we packed up on the Monday morning. We even added a bag of ice after a couple of days, most of which was still frozen when we get got home.

The Yeti Roadie 48 also makes a very useful mini-trailer, because once you close the lid and extend the handle you can pile plenty of camping kit on top and drag everything along with you. Basically, it’s just a fantastic and top-spec piece of kit.

If you ever want to see what great value camping kit looks like, take a walk around your local Decathlon store and check out their entire range. Because everything in there seems to be good quality, and the prices consistently knock our socks off. And so it was hardly a shock when we got our hands on this excellently priced Quechua cool box, and it performed every bit as well as we expected it to.

There are no overly bold claims here about keeping ice frozen for days on end. Decathlon simply state that their cooler will keep your food and drink fresh for around 13 hours, without the need to add ice packs or blocks. That figure rises to around 20 hours if you do add an ice block, though. We haven’t yet managed to test it at the 32°C outside temperature limit, but so far it certainly backs up its claim of being a solid option for a day in the great outdoors.

There are no flashy features with the Quechua Camping Rigid Cooler. You don’t get a drainage valve, ruggedised construction, or secure lid closure buckles; but at this price you can hardly complain. Our only real niggle is that lid, which you secure by rolling the carry handle over the top of it. If you’re not careful, it is quite easy to keep knocking the whole lid off, which can be quite annoying.   

It’s incredibly lightweight at just 2.8kg though, has a 24-litre capacity that can hold six 1.5-litre bottles, and appears to be completely water-tight. For single-day use, this is a great budget cool box option.

If you’re planning a long road trip, or you’re camping with a large family and won’t be anywhere near a plug socket for a few days, then you’ll need something big to keep your food and drinks chilled. Outwell have a stellar reputation when it comes to camping kit and we’re pleased to report their cool box range is no exception.

The Fulmar is an absolute beast in terms of size, but its empty weight is also impressive at just under 5kg. And it can also haul a load of up to 70kg. The 60-litre capacity means you can stuff it full of an impressive amount of food and drink (including upright 1.75-litre bottles), and in our experience it will keep things like vital supplies like milk cold for a whole long weekend of camping, thanks to its high density PU foam insulation.

The Outwell Fulmar feels very robust too, with strong durable handles and two buckles to secure the lid. And we have to mention the four handy cup holders on the lid, which allow it to double up as a coffee table too.

Stanley is famed for its flasks and its food containers. They're tough, beefy things that will likely outlive you. It therefore may come as a surprise to see Stanley winning an award with the adjective 'compact' in it.

Despite having a noticeably smaller volume than the Quecha Rigid Cooler 24L, the 15.1L Stanley cool box weighs more. It's indicative of the fact this cool box sticks to the Stanley principle of 'Built for Life'.

The Adventure Easy Carry Outdoor Cooler is insulated with double wall foam, so this modest cool box can keep its contents cool for at least a day (Stanley claims 36 hours). It has tough plastic clips and a leak-proof construction. There are also bungee straps on the lid for attaching other gear if you need to.

Day trips, couples' picnics, fishing trips - these are the sorts of things this cool box is ideal for.

The military-grade Dometic Patrol Coolbox range has been specifically built for rugged outdoor adventures and put through durability tests in harsh wilderness environments. Dometic claim it will keep ice frozen for days thanks to its thick PU insulated walls, and on a recent camping trip to a freakishly hot Lake District campsite our ice blocks still had a faint crust of frost on the outside after two nights. 

We’ve got the 20L version (it also comes in 35L and 50L), which slightly bizarrely Dometic’s own website states only has a capacity of 19 litres. It is, though, just about big enough to keep a supply of fresh food and a few beers cold for a couple of people for a weekend. So that means you’re able to stock up on BBQ food on the way to your campsite, safe in the knowledge you won’t have to eat it all on that first night and resort to crisps and boil-in-the-bag meals on your second.

Despite the relatively low capacity, the Dometic Patrol 20 is a chunky thing to keep in your car and you definitely wouldn’t want to carry it too far, but it’s absolutely perfect to keep at base camp for a weekend of adventure. It looks awesome too, which can’t be underestimated!

If you don’t fancy a big, rigid cool box to keep your food and drink chilled on outdoor trips, there are plenty of excellent cool bag options out there too. And the best one we’ve come across so far in terms of offering large capacity and excellent performance is the Outwell Cormorant L.

Firstly, it has a 34-litre capacity so can hold a huge amount of stuff. And we’re not just talking about food and drink here. Because thanks to its three zipped pockets (one complete with elastic straps that work as cutlery holders), you can easily organise and store things like plates, bottle openers, napkins, and anything else you might need for lunch stops and camping meals. There are large mesh pockets inside the bag where you can secure ice blocks and bottles to keep things organised, and the big U-shaped zipped opening gives you easy access to the main compartment.

The big drawback though, when you opt for a bag with a fabric exterior, is that it’s never going to keep your food and drinks cold for as long as a cool box. But we have to say the Outwell Cormorant L does a great job if you use it for what it’s designed for, which is to keep everything cool for up to 8 hours on a day trip. The 8mm internal foam walls do a good job if you stick a couple of ice blocks inside, and the padded shoulder straps/carry handles mean you can load it onto your back and head into the wild easily. It’s hard to fault this thing.

The Petromax 8 Cooler Bag is basically a halfway house between a cool bag and a cool box. If you take the stats supplied by the brand at face value, you could load this bag up with ice blocks, drinks and food, and they’ll still feel cool when you unzip it 4 to 6 days later. We haven’t quite managed 4 days of coolness, probably because we opened and closed it a lot over the course of our camping trip, but there were certainly no complaints about the performance after a full weekend of use.

The Petromax Cooler Bag comes in either 8L or 22L options, and we went for the smaller one because we wanted something that was easy to transport and could keep snacks and drinks cool on everything from day hikes and paddle board trips to overnight camps. And the reason we mention paddleboarding is that unlike a lot of cool bags, this one is designed to keep water out. Both the outer nylon fabric and the zips are water-repellent, so even if you do something daft like topple it off the side of your board or boat (which we have done by the way), you should still get away with it.

You need to pack quite frugally with an 8L capacity, but you can still squeeze six 0.5L bottles inside the Petromax Cooler Bag. The thick insulating foam walls do reduce the internal space quite a lot, so it looks smaller inside once you’ve opened it than it does when it’s shut, but that’s the price you pay for top-level cooling performance. There are also some excellent practical features, including two zipped pockets, two mesh pockets, a padded shoulder strap, and a bottle opener clipped to the back of the bag.

A quick Google search will reveal there are plenty of backpack cool bags on the market these days, at a wild range prices. But the Quechua Isothermal Backpack is the first one we’ve been lucky enough to test and, especially when you consider the outrageously low price, it’s going to take some beating.

First up, it does the all-important job of being a decent lightweight backpack fairly well. The foam back panel is well padded, the shoulder straps are also padded and adjustable, plus there are a couple of small zipped pockets (one on the front, one under the lid) and stretchy mesh pockets on the sides. One nice touch is a large stretchy mesh loop on the lid for stowing a picnic blanket. What’s it like as a cooler, you ask? The answer is pretty good. You can either trust the Decathlon promise that it’ll keep food and drink fresh for 7 hours without any added ice, or do what we did and slip a small ice block inside before you head off on your trip. 

We’ve used the Quechua Isothermal on plenty of mid-length local hikes, where the fact it’s designed as a backpack rather than a bag with a shoulder strap really sets it apart. We’ve also taken it to a couple of music festivals this summer, where it’s done the all-important job of keeping our drinks cold all day and into the night. Obviously not a cool bag with performance that’s designed for days, but if you use it for what it’s designed for you can’t go wrong.