Best Beach Coolers

If you are traveling with your family and want to spend a whole day at the beach, you probably already know that taking a cooler to the beach will be essential. There’s nothing you will benefit more from at the beach than a taking a cooler! Beach chairs can be replaced with towels on the sand and umbrellas can be replaced by the shade of palm trees, when available. But a cooler just can’t be replaced, because you get to pack exactly what your family needs for a whole day at the beach, which will save you money, keep you away from unhealthy foods and allow you to spend more time at the beach! But with so many options out there, which one is the best fit for your family?

Here are the three more common types of cooler and the pros and cons of each. We can’t pick one type as the best, because the value of each will depend on your personal needs. You will have to consider a few things when choosing a winner: size, convenience to carry and price.

Backpack cooler: Very convenient since it requires no effort to carry, and it’s already a very light cooler to begin with. It’s also a very affordable option. You can shop around and find different brands for various prices, but $25 should be a good ball park of how much you should consider spending on these. The downside is that the insulation is not near as good a hard-shell cooler and the space inside is also pretty limited. It’s great if you are going solo or as a couples. But if you have your whole family with you, this probably won’t hold all of your supplies for a whole day at the beach. Tip: if you go with this option, buy a few ice packs from the dollar store to keep things cold for longer, and keep the bag in the shade to maximize its insulation time. Here’s an example of a fairly priced backpack cooler.

Wheeled cooler: The assumptions is that wheels will make the cooler much easier to transport, but that is not necessarily true for the beach. Wheels often sink into the soft sand and with the sand stuck around the wheels you might as well just be pulling a regular cooler, because the wheels won’t be of any help. A solution for that is getting a cooler with bigger and thicker wheels.  The downside is that those are usually more expensive (from $45 to $100+), take up more space and are not light to begin with. The advantage is that this will be a heavy duty cooler with better insulation and that fits everything you can possibly need, or crave, to enjoy a day out sunbathing and sippin’ a cold drink at the beach! If you want a DYI project, check out this website teaching you how to change the wheels of a regular cooler for and affordable price.

Slide-top cooler: this is probably one of the most recognizable type of coolers out there. This cooler has a top handle that makes it very easy to carry and it still made of a hard material (usually Polyethylene) that will keep your items well insulated. You can find them in different sizes, but the average size fits around 30 cans plus ice. This is a great middle option, because it’s light when empty, affordable and of moderate capacity. You can always get more than one to distribute the weight and fit more stuff for your beach day! You can find these pretty much anywhere, but they always have sales online so keep an eye out for retail websites! The one from the photo was spotted here.