There is a great range of both ice and electric coolers out there but which is better for you. Let's look at ice coolers vs electric coolers and the pros and cons of each.
Check out my campervan solar setup where I can run an electric cooler indefinitely without ever having to worry about my car battery.
If you're looking to purchase a cooler, are you better off purchasing an ice cooler or an electric cooler? What is going to be best for your needs? In this episode, we'll look at ice coolers versus electric coolers and we'll look at some of the pros and the cons of each and I'll give you an idea of which may be best for your situation. So let's start by having a look at the pros of ice coolers, which are by far the most popular model. These range from everything from those sheep coolers that you purchased that, uh, around $20 or $30 as well as the soft coolers and backpacks all the way up to the really expensive coolers made by Yeti and grizzly. We're talking $800,000 plus. So these are very, very popular. A lot of people use them. And so let's start with these. The pros of ice cores, firstly, they're completely portable, so you don't need to plug them in for them to work.
So you don't need them to be plugged into your car or plugged into the wall. You just put ice in them and you can take them anywhere you want, so they're completely portable, which is great. You can go to the beach, you can go on picnics, you can take them camping, you can leave them in your car to go for a road trip there just there's so much flexibility with the way that you can use these ice coolers. They come in basically every shape, size and price, so they go really small coolers. You're talking. You could fit a couple of cans in there all the way out to really large 120 plus court coolers that you can just fit. Basically fit a person in and so they come in every size, every shape and prices range from urine, new $10 mark all the way out to over a thousand dollars.
So whatever shape you need, whether it's a hard cooler, a soft cooler or a backpack, and a bucket cooler, they're going to are basically every single shape you can want. Whatever size you need, you're going to be able to find it and whatever budget you have, you should be able to find something in your price range. They're easy to store. You just cleaned them out of the water, dry them off, and then you can store them in your garage wherever it is you want. I love that. Most of them are square, which means you can stack stuff on top of them and also if you drive them properly, you can store stuff inside them as well, so that's good. Especially if you're only going to use it a couple of times a year. Maybe you go camping or you just want to put some bees in it over Christmas.
Then they're really easy to store when you're not using them. They can also freeze items. If you buy the more expensive products, then you can freeze islands by putting them into the ice and so that's really great. For example, if you're out fishing and you want to freeze the fish that you catch, shack the fish in there and then put them under the ice and often. Now phrase, if you've got a good cooler, so lots of pros of ice coolers, they're really great products. What about the pros of electric coolers? Well, electrical is a quite convenient for your everyday sort of use if you're using them in the car or if you're using them, the office or something like that. Super convenient because you don't need any ice or you have to do is plug them in in order for them to work so you don't need to remember to buy eyes.
You don't need to remember to put ice in the freezer. You can just plug them in and off you go. Which is great. I used to be a pharmaceutical rep and so I was driving a lot in my car and so literally Kula is great because I don't have to worry about taking my iceberg out every night, freezing it and putting it back in the morning and it's just going to work for me. Another benefit of these electrical as is they can also be used to heat items, so a lot of them hate on ends up to about 120 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and so you can really use them to keep food warm or to warm up food if you need to do that as well as cool food. Whereas obviously if you've got an ice cooler, you're not going to be able to warm anything up.
They're also really easy to access, especially the smaller models like the one in the picture here, the black and decker, and they got an armrest on the top that just flips open and you can really easily access your food, all your drinks in them. They've also got cup holders for storing your drinks which are really practical for car drives and so these are really easy to access, which is great for stationary areas, so if it's going to live in your car and always be in your car, this can be a great option. If it's going to live in your office and always be in your office. This could also be a great option. Can Be great for trackers as well because you don't need to worry about ice or anything like that. All right. Now let's look at the cons of ice coolers because even though they're great, they're not perfect, so the first one is they require ice to operate.
Simple enough, it just means that you're going to need to remember to buy ice or you're going to need to remember to phrase your own eyes to use it. If you head out for the day and you've forgotten your eyes, we could buy some on the road, but otherwise basically your cooler is going to be useless, so they require ice to operate. As the ice melts and turns into water, if you haven't protected you, food properly can lead to soggy food, could get into your sandwiches, and we all know how bad soggy bread is so it can lead to soggy food, which has a negative. There can be very hard to move when full because you've got to fill these up with ice which turns into water and you're putting food and drinks in it and it becomes extremely hard to move these items when they're full.
That's why often one with wheels, like the one in the picture here can be great. Making it easier to move, but basically, yeah, they're going to be really difficult to move once you've filled them up, which can be annoying and occasionally they do leak. They can leak out through the taps that the drainage holes that they have. If you don't screw it on properly or if you knock it over, then obviously it's going to pop open and leak a lot of water and a lot of ice everywhere, which is annoying. Whereas within electrical light you knock it over you food and drinks or fall out, but you're not going to wet the entire of your car or something like that. So then the negatives of the ice coolers and there's also some negatives of the electric coolers. They've got limited cooling capacity, so most of them cool down the inside about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, less than the exterior that they're in, so they're not going to call it super cold, like an icicle award where you can just put your drink in the ice.
It's going to get super cold. Really. You need to put cold stuff in these electric coolers already and it's just going to keep them cool throughout the day and none of the negative with most of the models is they don't work when the car is off and this just means that if you've got cool stuff in there and you're not in your car all the time and you're not having your car on or then I can stop working. And the way around this is to have like a dual battery system where you can draw power from a battery and it's not going to ruin the starting of your car. But if you're buying a cheaper model, most of us won't have that. And the more expensive models can actually work when the car is off. So if you buying the premium models that acts as fridges and freezers, well they don't actually have limited cooling capacity.
You can't actually free stuff in them and they will continue to work when the car is off. But with cheaper models, they're not going to work when the car is off, which is a big downside. They're not very portable. They do come with shoulder straps, but you're unlikely to use them. You're going to look a bit silly walking around carrying an electric collar on your picnic. And so they're not that portable. They're hard. They're not that great to carry. You can't actually use ice in them, which is annoying. He can use ice bricks but not ice because as the water melts, it can get into the fan or into the electrics and it can cause massive problems. So you can't use ice, which is a negative in nature. Um, and also the fan makes noise, so they run fans and it just makes a low humming noise.
And that can annoy some people. For most of us, we're not going to hear it, especially if we're driving around in our car. But for some people that may be annoying. So one thing that we haven't really talked about is the price difference between them and that's because there's not a lot of price difference between them. When you're looking at electric coolers, they stopped from around a $35 range for the cheaper models and they're going to be fine if you're just keeping drinks and some sandwiches for some short car trips. Uh, the black and decker that I've got pictured here retails for around $75. And the more expensive ones, a 800 a thousand dollars are going to get you a fridge and a freezer that's going to work when the car's off, it's going to give you a bigger side size, etc. When we go to the ice coolers were going to similar price range, they start from a little bit cheaper around the 10 to $15 mark and then they go up from there.
And the more premium ice coolers Will cost you around $800,000 plus. So in terms of price range, they're actually very similar with the ice coolers and maybe being a little bit cheaper for the size that you're going to get. But obviously they don't have any electronics in them. They're just basically a box that is insulating. So when it comes to price, there's not a lot of difference, but if prices really an issue, then an icicle is probably going to be cheaper for you. Ice coolers tend to be best for portability, so if you want to be able to take this onto your boat, you want to take it on a picnic, you want to take it down to the beach, you want to take it with you on camping trips and you want that flexibility. Then ice cores can be great because they're portable. You can take them anywhere.
They don't require electricity and it's very flexible with their use. So you can take them all over the place, use them for a whole bunch of different occasions. The tend to be best for storing things like drinks and cold, very cold things because it's things are touching the ice. They're going to get extremely cold. So you're better off storing drinks and really cool items in the ice coolers and so it's best if you want, if you want something that you can just take with you everywhere, something that you're not going to use all the time, it's just going to be used for camping or use for picnics. Then ice cores are great for that and if you had stuff to stay really, really cold, you can get a decent ice cooler for around 40, $50. That's going to keep things really cold or maybe even free some of your items.
So I schools are really good for those sorts of things and electrical as a best for short term road trips. So let's say you're going on a road trip with your family and you just want to keep some drinks and some food cold while you're in the car. Then this is absolutely perfect for that. They're also great for stationary unit, so it's going to stay in your car or if it's going to be in your office or be in a particular room and you just going to leave it there. Then these are great because you're not going to have to replace the ice, drain the unit and deal with all that sort of stuff. And so for stationary unit electrical, is it going to be best and electrical is a really great for keeping, yeah, drinks, cool, but they're not going to cool down drinks for you and keeping dry food because you're not going to have the hassle of the wetness of the water in there, so they tend to be best for storing dry food, storing a couple of cool drinks, but they're not going to call the drinks down for you.
Whereas something I didn't mention about the ice coolers is actually cool things down for you because you're putting them in ice. It's actually going to cool things down at room temperature and make them cold. Whereas the electrical as aren't going to do that, they're just going to keep things cold that are already cold. So when it comes to ice cooler versus electrical, what do you think's best for you? Do you want something that's going to cool down items for you that's completely portable, that you can store easily and use anytime within a school is probably going to be great for that. Do you want something that's going to be great for short car trips or that's going to be a stationary unit or that your. You know you don't wAnt to have the hassle of buying ice or phrasing things because you're going to be using it so regularly and you have access to a power source or there may be an electrical art is going to be best for you. I hope that this has helped you decide between ice cores and electrical wires and discover which one's best for you. All in all, I think they're both right and it's really dependent on the situation which color you should use to check out cooler buying guides, reviews of coolers. Go ahead and check out my [email protected]. And until next time guys, stay cool.
