In this Engel Cooler Unboxing I show you the key features of the Yeti Deep Blue 35 and give you my initial thoughts and review.
Hey guys, Ryan here from huntingwaterfalls.com. And today, I'm really excited to be opening my brand new Engel 35 cooler. These have performed really well on ice tests and they're really well-priced – around $240 on amazon.com. Links in the description below. So I'm excited to unbox this today. So let's go ahead and get it out of the box so we can have a look at it and see its features.
So here, we have our Engel DeepBlue cooler. Now, this plastic is a white sort of ruffled plastic. I'm not sure if you can see the kind of – I don't know how you would describe it exactly, but I feel like it's going to get a bit dirty given that. The plastic isn't as nice as the one that you would find on the Yeti. It doesn't have that premium feel to it that the Yeti does.
But the first thing you'll notice is the handles on this that are different from the pull-down handles on the Yeti or the push-and-pull ones on the Pelican. So these actually just flip up from the bottom and come down like that. And you can go ahead and put it up and then push it in.
These are quite easy to do and really feel quite nice holding it in. We can also see here that we have an emergency bottle opener. So I will have to go ahead and get a beer and test that out.
Let's go ahead and open this up. Now, when I opened up the Yeti, I got a free basket inside. Am I going to get the same treatment? No. Unfortunately, not. This is empty. We have a post card. I don't even know what that's for. And we have some sort of catalog sort of thing. Pretty boring.
The inside is very similar to the Yeti – it's just a box with a little drainage plug down the bottom here which is a bit lower than the bottom so this should completely drain by itself. We also have 2 gaps in here for a divider that can double as a cutting board. So that's a nice feature to have in here. Let's go ahead and look at how much insulation this has.
If we look at the side here, there is a bit of a lip here. But if we look at this point, that's kind of where the insulation is all around. It's not going to be a perfect measure, but it looks like a little bit less than 2 inches on the side there. If we have a look at this side, then we can see it's about 2 and 3/4 inches, but again, there's a lip.
That's probably a little bit less than half an inch so you're kind of looking at 2.5 inches on the side there. But if you have a look at the side, then you'll see that it's got this indent. So it's not 2.5 inches all the way around because it has this indent in here. So kind of more like 2 inches all around in terms of insulation. And if we look at the lid, we can see it's almost 3 inches of insulation on there.
There's a little bit that protrudes here so you could kind of say that it's 3 inches to that point, but that's just really a small point that goes around and isn't on the whole thing. And this kind of goes in even further than the lid so I would say you're probably looking at 2.5 inches in the lid, maximum. But we'll see if insulation is everything when we get to the ice test.
Looking at the lid, we can see the absence of any branding or any ruler marks on the lid at all. We have our padlock points here so we can lock it up and make it bear proof as well. If we go ahead and open this lid again, then we can see that we have tie-down points here as well that go through the rope handles. Looking at the rope handles here, we've a white nylon rope with a kind of firm plastic handle that has the finger groves in there. Nothing too fancy, very similar to the Yeti but with the plastic handles instead of the rubber handles.
The cooler does feel a bit heavier than the Yeti. But it is quite easy to hold with those handles so that's absolutely fine. If we look at the lid, then we can see that it has this single-pin hinge all the way over. And you can put a decent amount of force on that and it's not going to break. So that's really sturdy. That's probably never going to break on the cooler.
So on the bottom, we've got these wide rubber non-slip feet. I like that they're white because that generally means they're not going to leave marks on anything that I put this on. If we have a look a the drainage plug, we can see that it's quite easy to open because it has a kind of bigger surface of the drainage plug. But you can see that it's still a 1-inch drain plug down there.
I imagine that'll drain nicely. It's not attached, so do be careful not to lose that. On the inside of the lid, we do have some Engel branding here. That's just a sticker. And then we've got some – I don't know. There's some points in here where it goes in. I don't know why they have that.
I feel like you'd be losing insulation because of that. But maybe there's a reason that they have that. And we also have a white rubber commercial-grade gasket that is going to keep all the air out. Something that I like about this cooler is that when you push on these, it really does pull it down quite tight and there's no give in that. With the Pelican that I have, once you lock it in place, you can kind of open it up and it's not airtight. I feel like this has a better chance of being airtight. We've got our Engel branding on the front there and that's about it for the Engel cooler.
So there you have my unboxing of the Engel 35 DeepBlue series cooler. Now, my fist impressions of this that this is a really nice cooler. It's very sturdily built. I really like these handles. Love the fact that there's an emergency bottle opener as well. All in all, it just feels really well-built and these are meant to be some of the best coolers in terms of ice retention. So we will be putting that to the test in a future video.
The ruffled plastic, I'm not a huge fan of because I feel like it will get dirtier and be harder to clean than maybe a smooth plastic. Just because it has all these little crevices that dirt can get in and get stuck in. But we'll see over time if that is actually the case.
So, all in all, this seems like a great cooler. It's really well-priced at around $100 or more cheaper than a Yeti of the similar size. And so, if you're looking for a cooler that is very similar to the Yeti, probably holds ice even longer, built just as sturdy and just as well, then Engel could definitely be the cooler for you.
I will leave the links down to Amazon below where you can pick up this cooler for around $240. That is my affiliate link so if you go through that, I absolutely appreciate it. And if you like this video, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe for future cooler reviews and the ice test challenge for this Engel as well as other coolers. Thanks so much for watching today, guys, and until next time, stay cool.
