“The most feature packed cooler ever” was Kickstarted to some fanfare late last year, earning over $185,000 (against a $50,000 ask) from backers anxious to get their hands on the ice chest to end all ice chests. Now the finished product is here, available in three capacities (60, 80, or 85 quarts), each in three to five colors.
The promises of the ROVR—we reviewed the smallest, the RollR 60—are substantial. Up to 10 days of ice retention. A dry bin to store goodies you don’t want to get wet (or to hold clean ice for drinks). A container deep enough to store a bottle of wine upright. Bearproof.
Photos don’t do the ROVR justice. Next to a rugged hipster’s ankles or a happy dog, it looks almost demure and petite. But in person, it’s a monster, so huge that it drew an immediate what’s-that-thing-in-the-garage line of inquiry when my wife got home from work. The chartreuse color scheme (ROVR calls it “moss”) probably didn’t help its case.
The RollR 60 was in the garage because, frankly, getting it up the stairs and into the house was unrealistic. At 26 x 18 x 20 inches and 45 pounds—empty—hauling the cooler up narrow stairs is a two-man job. (Compare to the Yeti Tundra 65, which weighs 29 pounds.) Even getting it into the trunk of my SUV, a reasonably spacious Mazda CX-5, was an awkward proposition, and once it was there, it nearly filled the trunk space, with room only for a couple of bags to one side. And this is the small version of the cooler. With nothing in it.
Of course, the RollR is meant to be used full, not empty, and while that makes the cooler even more unmanageable, once you put actual stuff in it, it doesn’t take long to see how impressively constructed the thing is. I knew the claim of 10 days of ice retention was a stretch, but it took a still-impressive four days for a 10-pound bag of ice to melt in my testing, losing about a quarter of its volume each day. The deep interior is a nice feature, so you don’t have to wedge bottles through the ice in order for them to fit upright in the bin. As well, the removable dry bin is handy—though it’s more appropriate for things like tomatoes and lettuce than bottles of beer.
Getting around with the RollR is made much simpler thanks to a pair of 9-inch all-terrain tires and a handle that swings up to let you drag it around. The handle design isn’t ideal—it only pivots up 90 degrees, requiring some hunching over to pull it along—but it does at least make moving a filled cooler more than a few feet possible.
