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Keep your food and drink colder for longer, with these tried and tested cool bags
Cool bags are great for keeping food chilled, whether you’re going camping, for a picnic or packing your kids’ school lunch. There’s a wide variety of cool bags and boxes out there to choose from, so, finding the right one takes a bit of research. As ever, we’re here to help.
The best cool bags should see an end to sweaty strawberries, melted chocolate, and – worst of all – warm wine. You might want a one-size-fits-all option, or you might decide you need two different cool bags or boxes for different things.
There are active and passive cool bags. Passive ones insulate food and should keep food and drink at the temperature it’s already at. These ideally need to be packed out with ice packs or ice, which helps keep things cool inside.
The fuller your cool bag, the better it works (but the heavier it becomes), and if you can freeze water bottles or juice boxes beforehand, this is great. If you prefer to use ice to chill down your cool box, look for one that’s easy to empty – a drain valve in a rigid cool box will help.
These passive cool bags and boxes are ideal for picnics, hikes and anything else where you need portable cold food and drink. But if you’re going away for longer and have access to some electricity, an active cool box may be better.
Active cool boxes plug into the mains or via a lighter in your vehicle and work as mini fridges when you’re on the go. They actively cool the air inside them – some even have fans to keep the air moving. These are certainly fancier but more expensive and bulkier to carry. To help you decide which cool bag or box is right for you, we’ve rounded up our favourites.
We’ve been testing cool bags and boxes – passive and active – for years. We’ve been camping and enjoyed almost 100 picnics, beach trips, hikes and days out with various cool bags. Through thorough testing, first and foremost, we wanted to check that each one insulated our food. Warm drinks and soggy sandwiches have no place on a picnic. We also looked at ease of use, portability, price, ease of cleaning and how stylish the cool bags look (call us shallow). Here are the ones that made the cut.
We highly rated the Outwell cool box. It’s well proportioned with lots of space for a large picnic, yet it is lightweight. The box feels completely life-proof in its durability, and we think it offers great value for money. If you’re off on a longer trip or want beefier cooling facilities, the Halfords cooler is brilliant. For one-handed carry, the Coleman gets our two thumbs-up approval.
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