Do YETI products suck or is just me?

Taste a very subjective conclusion, but I'm glad that someone has put the double cooler idea to the test!

I see what you did there.

But seriously, this is a great idea.

I just looked up the RTIC hard coolers: the 52 qt (probably the size I would buy) is $200. Like I said, I'm cheap, but even that gives me sticker shock. (For comparison, a "premium" Igloo 52 qt cooler is $50 at REI. A standard cooler that size at Walmart is more like $25-30.)

But I might consider the RTIC one. Is the difference in performance really commensurate with the price difference?

I used to have the Igloo and Coleman coolers comparable to the Igloo REI carries. I think they were something like the "Extreme" and "Maxcold" lines though I don't remember which belonged to which. The RTIC definitely performs better but I think there are a couple of things to consider.

First is the size. Most manufactures like Igloo/Coleman don't make good small coolers. Usually the smallest of their premium line is in the 50Qt range. That meant that I was filling it with a LOT of ice and still not using all of the volume which I believe degrades performance. When I down-sized, their smaller coolers were horrible. I was buying ice every single day, sometimes even twice on hot summer days. I gave up on those and went back to my too-big coolers.

Second is durability. The lid on one cooler was never the same after somebody used it for a step stool putting up a tarp, and another cooler basically exploded when one of the kids dropped it. Didn't seem like a big deal since I never expected my $40 coolers to last forever, but it did mean a petty big hunk of plastic going into a landfill.

The RTIC/Yeti/Orca type coolers have walls that are about double the thickness and weigh twice as much. They're just physically more robust, densely insulated. It's not some technological miracle. They won't keep things cold 4 times longer to justify the x4 price tag. It's worth it for me because I now have a small cooler that will get me through the weekend without hunting down ice. But if I need a bigger cooler, the disadvantage is that they're super heavy.

I bought a 35 qt Canyon cooler. It's rotoformed like the Yeti. It actually has a slightly thicker wall than the Yeti's. Serious gaskets like Yeti. I got 35 qt for size and weight as mentioned by others. I can just handle it when it is filled.

This is a huge consideration for me. I use and fill my basic 50-qt cooler even just for me if I'm hitting the road for a few days (I'll fill up with cold beverages if nothing else). Hauling that from the kitchen to the car is tricky, and once it's there I don't remove it--sometimes a pain if parking for a camp site is too far from the car, but tant pis as the French say. I'm thinking that I'd do well to load the thing with it already in the car in the first place, if not for the annoyance of having to haul all the stuff. Still--there's really no way for a person my size to carry a full-sized cooler using really good form.