The humble hard-sided cooler continues to evolve into a more versatile, functional piece of every-weekend outdoor gear. Following up on last year's ice-salvaging rotomolded rollers, Coleman steps in a new direction it qualifies as a world first. The company's new Snap 'N Go series comprises nicely squared cooler boxes that stack and store neatly when full and even more neatly after instantly folding down to a fraction their size. These insulated briefcases promise to be the most space-efficient hard-sided coolers money can buy.
I know very well just what bulky space hogs coolers are. I have them stacked in the garage, a few out on the deck and a couple overflowing into various rooms and closets around the house.
Granted, I probably have more coolers than the average Joe since I write about and test them, but I also have a decent amount of space to keep them in. I can only imagine what storing a hard cooler collection in a cramped, garage-less city apartment or small mountainside condo is like. Sure, you could stop at just a single cooler, but different trips and group sizes always end up demanding different coolers, and before you know it, you have a whole raft of them taking up all kinds of space around the home.
Long story short, a cooler that can carry a full 55 quarts (52 L) of food and beverage (or just 93 cans, no ice, if it's one of those events), flatpack down to a third its size, and store away like a book on a bookshelf is a highly intriguing proposition. Imagine how your own cooler collection is stored right this second; then imagine cutting it to a third that size. You could easily stack up a full collection of collapsed Snap 'N Go coolers in the same footprint as a single full-size cooler or two.
To achieve what it reckons is the world's first collapsible hard-plastic cooler launch, Coleman ultimately borrowed from folding storage crate design. The thing about cargo crates in general is that they store much better when they have perfectly vertical walls and square corners, lining up and stacking together so snugly, there's not a molecule of wasted air between them.
But square crates don't play nearly as nicely when it comes to shipping them to customers around the country and world since they take up the full amount of volume and don't nest together the way tapered-wall crates do. The market's solution for this conundrum is the square, vertically walled storage crate that collapses, thereby slashing shipping volume while still providing neat-stacking wall-against-wall storage performance for the customer.
Coleman ports the same strategy over to the cooler segment, creating a collapsible cold box that can ship and store at a fraction of its full volume. It uses the same style of hinge-split front and rear walls and swinging sidewalls to achieve this feat.
As the "Snap 'N Go" product name suggests, the cooler pulls and snaps into form in a single swift motion. The front and rear walls expand into form freeing the two side walls to swing down and secure the whole cube in place. The video shows exactly how it unfolds (and folds):
Full-width hinged creases may be necessary for folding, but they aren't optimal for preventing leaks from melted ice. Coleman lines each Snap 'N Go cooler with a thin, supple inner bladder that ensures the design remains watertight. The bladder removes when it's time to fold up the cooler, resting on top below the closed lid.
The Snap 'N Go series' thinner, foldable insulated construction can't touch the five-day ice retention Coleman claims for its thick, rotomolded Pro cooler lineup and some lower-priced model, but Coleman estimates between 48 and 64 hours of ice retention, depending on the size of the individual Snap 'N Go model. That's plenty of time to host a picnic, party or tailgate and about right for a weekend camping trip.
Once folded, the Snap 'N Go cooler looks more like a Snap 'N Go briefcase. The 55-quart model's height drops by 66% from 14 inches (36 cm) down to 4.7 inches (12 cm), meaning its total exterior volume drops according so the collapsed package takes up roughly a third of the space.
While we mentioned home storage space savings as one primary advantage of the collapsible construction, another is simplified repacking after a camping trip or tailgate, when you're too tired to figure out the 3D master puzzle key you need to pack all your gear the way you had it on the trip in. The cooler is likely one of the biggest pieces of that puzzle, so shrinking it to a third the height will save serious space and make it easier to get everything packed up and moving on its way.
Looking at the Snap 'N Go cooler in collapsed form, it reminds us more of a camping stove. We decided to quickly compare the packed dimensions to some of Coleman's classic dual-burner stoves, and while the 55-quart (52-L) model mentioned above is a bit bigger, the 22.6 x 12 x 4.5-in (57 x 30.5 x 11-cm) packed 35-qt (33-L) version measures in pretty closely to Coleman's 21 x 12.8 x 3.6-in (53 x 32.5 x 9-cm) Cascade Classic Camping Stove. The cooler and stove should stack pretty neatly together on the garage shelf.
Coleman recently launched three Snap 'N Go models: the 55-qt cooler prices in at US$240, the 45-qt model at $220 and the 35-quart version at $200. The three units feature the same folding action and design, but certain specs vary. For instance, all three collapse to 4.7 in in height but have differing full-size heights, so they don't save quite as much space as the 55-quart version. The 35-quart model folds to about half its full size rather than a third. Empty cooler weights range between 14 and 20 lb (6.4 and 9 kg).
Source: Coleman
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