They promise to keep your food and drinks cold while you’re away from a fridge, but sometimes carrying a giant cooler is just overkill. For those times when you’re only gone for a day, or just need to feed yourself, YETI has created a soft-sided cooler called the Hopper that’s engineered to keep ice frozen for days, and never leak while you’re carrying it.
The Hopper certainly isn’t the first cooler you can toss over your shoulder, but it seems like the first to be properly engineered to deliver on its insulating claims. Its 20-litre chamber is surrounded by 2.5cm of insulation on the sides, and 4cm on the bottom, ensuring that even if placed on a warm surface it will still keep everything inside cold.
The bag’s opening up top is sealed with a waterproof, airtight zipper — the same you’ll find on HazMat suits — that stops leaks even if the Hopper is held completely upside-down. And while the fabric lining the inside is completely waterproof as it needs to be, the fabric used on the rest of the bag is also water-resistant so the occasional splash or shower isn’t going to hurt it.
Available come October, pricing for the YETI Hopper hasn’t been revealed just yet, but if it delivers on its promise of keeping your cold ones truly cold, it could be worth however much they end up asking. [YETI]