Kiss the days of heavy bags of melting ice goodbye, Dometic has a line of coolers that run off your quad or UTV's 12v battery so efficient, they can keep ice cream frozen for your next excursion or camping trip.

Best of all they are designed with protection so they won't run the battery dead on you either:

Meet the Dometic Iceless Cooler - ATVConnection.com

 

How much for this mini Frigidaire?.. Never mind I found it.. over 600 bucks..

 

My parents bought a Koolatron 35 years ago at a fraction of the price. They can be switched to warm things up too. 12 Volt Koolatron Cooler Warmer - 12 Volt Car, Can, Beverage, Thermoelectric, Travel Coolers and Warmers

 

The older models (less expensive) are rated to keep cold at 45-50 degrees below ambient temperature.....so if it is 90 outside the coldest it can go is 50 degrees, so not very cold on hot days, however these newer (more expensive) models will actually get cold down to almost freezing. I will add that the colder you set them the more battery it uses big time. If you look at temp ratings...42-44 is not bad for battery life but drop that temp to 33 and battery life is almost cut in half. I can get my stuff colder with ice and I can buy a lot of ice for 600 big ones!!

 

I tried the Dc coolers on a car trip , a block of ice and the 4 day "Coleman Extreme" is the way to go.
You need a soft cooler not a hard case cooler on ATV racks or your beer will be dancing inside like dice in a can in Vegas. Found that out the hard way.

 

Pack enough ice in the cooler and you can probably keep your cans from moving around too much, at least until it all melts. These plug in coolers are very nice but I just couldn't justify spending that much on such a luxury item. The fancy coolers that keep ice for like 2 weeks like the lesser expensive RTIC brand that perform just as well as the YETI and cost a lot less would be a little less expensive option. $200 sounds better than $600 and no need for a power source either. I'll use my $20 Igloo and stuff it full of gatorade bottles of ice and it will work well enough for me. Even if they melt, I then have very cold bottles of water to drink and not a cooler full of water.

 

Those actually look pretty cool and probably work just as well as the one featured here. I haven't been on a trip in years that was more than just a day trip so a decent regular cooler will do for me.

 

I just like a soft cooler with a 1/2 block ( not cubes) of ice and a 12 pack on a ride. Once you remove a can or bottle the bungee cords squeeze out the excess space and do not allow anything inside to bounce.
The only thing that seems to work for me.

 

My friends who drink beer carry hard 6-pack coolers with one of these blue ice block things. It fits tight enough that the cans can't bounce around. When they empty a can they put it back in the cooler to take up the space. I use a bigger cooler that can hold 8 one quart bottles of Powerade/Gatorade or 6 bottles and 7 pounds of ice. I normally carry 6 bottles and no ice in it during a ride since ice water has a tendency to splash out when hitting the whoop-de-doos. The bottles bounce around but generally stay next to each other right side up.

I don't think one of the electronic coolers would survive the beating it would get on one of our typical rides. As for the cooler I have back at camp it holds 15 Powerades and 20 pounds of ice. I add ice nearly every day but would rather buy 7 pound bags of ice than an expensive cooler an a battery to run it off.

 

Got a chuckle from your beer can story, as it reminded me of one from years back. We had lots of leftover can beer from my daughters wedding pushed back in a corner in the garage. After some years being forgotten I cleaned up and found them, needless to say they were no good so we made beer can rockets from them. Take a nice hot camp fire and set the beer can in the hot coals with the pop top down.....after a short while the pressure builds and blows the pop top sending the can many stories high into the night sky with a long trail of foam. The next morning we rounded up all the empty cans..er I mean spent rocket engines!!