Which one? Iceboxes & Eskies, Downunder, Coleman, Fibreglass or Plastic???

g'day paul &suz
i've got a evercool,is a bit dearer but it's a great esky.in the long term might be worth think'n about?
cheers toohey

the design of the tropical icebox has a built in recessed edge for carrying therefore no worries about weak handles breaking, and its lid cant fold back too far so as to damage the hinges, and it seals well due to the lid and body both being very flat....cant comment on its ice lasting ability, only had it a couple of days

Any of these are good. Look for one with an insulated lid and good seals. They should be airtight. On our old fibreglass one, when we drained the water we couldn't open the lid.
Get a big one and a small one. Keep your meat and other perishables in the big one. Put in block ice you have had in the bottom of your freezer at home for a couple of weeks. Only open this big one once or twice a day. Try to keep it out of direct sunlight and keep it cool. Take out of it what you will need for each day and put this into the smaller one, eg milk, butter, meat for tonight, drinks for the kids etc. Have some smaller block ice in this one as well. Top it up with party ice as you need to.
Do this and you will bring home some of your block ice in the big esky and nothing will have gone off.
We used do this before we had a fridge and it was great. We used to go away for 2 weeks at a time. No kids though. We even kept the fish we caught in the big esky.
Noel

great advice thanks!

G'day Paul & Suz

I own a 73L Downunder icebox and a 82L Tropical icebox. To see which was better I placed two ice bricks into each box. The bricks were one litre each and the boxes were left closed for about 20 hours without opening. When opened the Downunder box had about a third of its ice remaining while the ice in the Tropical had completely thawed and was much warmer. To be fair the Tropical is a bigger box and would have taken more to cool it however I consider the performance of the Downunder to be better. In my opinion the construction of the Tropical is better than alot of the plastic boxes I have seen and will take more of a beating than a fragile fibreglass box and are good value for money. There are certainly positives and negatives for both types of construction and which one you choose depends on the intended use. Hope this helps.

Regards
Darren.

Hi Paul and Suz,

We just recently bought one of the blue downunder ones (73lt) as we wanted something to use when going away for a weekend without needing to take the coleman fridge and the gas bottle etc. We thought about the glass ones but decided that the plastic would take the knocks better and the downunder seemed a better shape than the tropical since it does not have the prominent lip which I think would get in the way in the back of the truck. We have used it only one weekend and with a couple of frozen milk bottles of water and a couple of those silver ice pack things it went very well. Milk etc still cold at the end of two days. Not a real test I know but exactly what we bought it for so we were pretty happy. There is no way that the old cheap eskis we have would have done the same.

Tim.

Paul & Suz

We have the white fibreglass Downiunder (55L i think). It's been great and keeps ice much longer then other poples iceboxes that I camp with.

Being fibreglass it is more prone to cracking. I've got some cracks around the top of the main section where the lid comes down on. The cracks happen ussually when it's being thrown around in the back of the car. It doesn't affect the performance though.

It also seals really well. As mentioned before, when we let the water out it takes a strong man to open the lid. The same happens if you slam the lid shut. My wife can't open it.

The best way to see which performs the best is to find out their R-values. Naturally manufacturers don't give out that information but you can still ask beacuse as far as I'm concerned that is the MOST imporatant factor of an esky.
If you can find a shop with all these iceboxes, try and get them to drop an equal amount of ice into each one. Return the next day and see how well each has performed. I know, it's a long shot, but you can ask anyway.

Perhaps try emailing the manufacturers about the R values.

One more thing. Don't really bother with warranties. A longer warranty will not keep your food colder. I can sell you a cheap clear plastic box with a 20 year warranty but it won't keep your beers cold for very long. The warranties have nothing to do with the iceboxes ability tyo stay cool.

Cheers

R.