6 Best Small Coolers, Tested by Our Experts

With a small cooler in hand, I can take all of them to the beach or a picnic in the park without lugging a heavy trunk with me. Heck, a personal-sized cooler even sits perfectly atop my paddleboard, so I never need to oar back to shore—or share.

But as with all things, I needed to know whether I was using the best, so Consumer Reports purchased six popular models, and CR lab tester José Amézquita put them to the test in our temperature-controlled lab to see which ones could handle the heat and keep their cool. Some were soft-sided and some were hard-sided, but all were easily portable and could fit a six-pack and a couple of pounds of ice.