Heard a lot about how good RTIC is off of this board..bought a large soft side....it is terrible, put in cold beverages and ice...have water in about 4 hours without even opening it up.

WOULD NOT RECOMMEND

OK, too bad for you. I've had precisely the opposite experience. I'll take your cooler off your hands if you don't want it.

Impossible. Where was the cooler? I'm not sure an open bucket of ice with cold drinks in it would melt in 4 hours.

Will say I've had good luck with both my RTIC soft sided coolers. Ditto with my Yeti soft side.

Will say I prefer the Yeti but I actually like that top zipper design (I'm in the minority I think).

Nice to know we as americans are have such insulated coolers that we don't understand the cooler problems the rest of the world faces. Kiss the nearest soldier, salute your copy of the constitution carved in marble that hangs on the wall and be greatful.

Back seat of truck riding around the ranch! Highly disappointed...by the way ...you want to buy it no problem discounted to $123.99 and you pay the freight

AggieGunslinger...I have earned plenty of cooler time after 27 yrs of service...

So is this the new shoot it in the nuts?

Let me point you over here...read me.

I won one as a door prize at a post rodeo golf tournament....Corral Club Tear Down Classic. Like Finn, I've had the opposite experience. Love mine.

This your truck?

Colonel A. 1976 said:

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Back seat of truck riding around the ranch! Highly disappointed...by the way ...you want to buy it no problem discounted to $123.99 and you pay the freight

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Nah, you said it's defective. I'll pay a 6-pack of cheap beer.

Hmmm. Put mostly warm drinks -- about 10-12 -- in a soft side last week. Drove to Sonic and bought a 10lb bag of ice; put that in. This was around 4:00 in the afternoon. It was zipped up for a few hours, but when I got home that evening, with about half the drinks, I put them (ice cold) into the fridge and left the cooler's ice and water unzipped. I decided to put in some warm cans of soda -- I think I got 10 cans in there mostly or completely under water. The next morning, everything was ice cold, the water was cold, there was still maybe 2-3 lbs of ice and all this happened with the bag unzipped. I put some more warm drinks in there after taking those out and they all got cold but the ice was gone by the end of the day.

if the beer was hot and only one small bag of ice was added then i can totally see this happening.

I have zero doubts that there is some information that has been left out of your review

Great luck with mine too. Keep it behind my console, in front of back seat and kept Ice for 3 days with the zipper unzipped because it's hard to unzip while driving... Great product!

If you pre-chill it, put in cold drinks, fill cooler to the max with ice and never open it you should get a few days out of it.

Put my HLS&R softside to the test this weekend. Put beer and ice in it at 2pm on Friday. 20 cold beers and ice. Never zipped it. Removed 12 beers from it over the course of the evening. Forgot about it until 3pm the next day, in the driveway, in full sun. Both days in the mid-80s. Still had ice and cold beer in the unzipped cooler.

Knucklesammich said:

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Will say I've had good luck with both my RTIC soft sided coolers. Ditto with my Yeti soft side.

Will say I prefer the Yeti but I actually like that top zipper design (I'm in the minority I think).

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You mean the zipper that keeps things closed(ish) even when unzipped thus keeping things cold? Yeah, that seems like a poor design for a cooler.

Not to mention I seem to remember the zipper alone costs yeti somewhere in the neighborhood of $70. Apparently the differences in the rtic and yeti hard coolers is pointless. The zipper alone makes the yeti a vastly superior product for soft sided options.

I agree with OP. Our frig went out and I put a bunch of items in several different coolers on ice while we got a new frig. I had two cheap and very old igloos and the large RTIC softside. I had to replace the ice twice as often on the RTIC than the 10 year old, $20 igloos from Walmart.

In my opinion, they suck.

So was the cooler sitting in your truck/the heat before putting ice in it?

ellthefarm
12:47p
A

I agree with OP. Our frig went out and I put a bunch of items in several different coolers on ice while we got a new frig. I had two cheap and very old igloos and the large RTIC softside. I had to replace the ice twice as often on the RTIC than the 10 year old, $20 igloos from Walmart.

In my opinion, they suck.

DITTO!

Well I put 12 warm waters and 6 warm Gatorades and a 10 pound bag of ice in my Rtic 40 soft-side a couple weeks ago when I was fishing. They went in about 7am and were on the deck of my boat all day in 80'ish degree, bright sunshine all day and when I got home at about 5pm there was still a good deal of ice in the cooler.

Colonel A. 1976 said:

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ellthefarm
12:47p
A

I agree with OP. Our frig went out and I put a bunch of items in several different coolers on ice while we got a new frig. I had two cheap and very old igloos and the large RTIC softside. I had to replace the ice twice as often on the RTIC than the 10 year old, $20 igloos from Walmart.

In my opinion, they suck.

DITTO!

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Lol, so in a thread you started with everyone relating experiences counter to yours you seize on the only similar review and that's validation? Hahaha. Sounds like you don't know how to use a cooler. Or got a defective one at least.

The complaint I hear on the top zipper yetis is that it's hard to get in and out of. I like it precisely because of the quality zipper...it's been water tight and sand proof which is nice for sure.

I left it unzipped last summer and it held ice all day and into the next. I problem

This past weekend did the same with the rtic clam shell.

I'd probably grab the Yeti as my first choice but it was also way more expensive.