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As much as I love to find regional gas station delicacies while road-tripping, I still like having a cooler full of food and drinks in the car. This 50-quart Frost Vault from Ninja will keep your supplies cold, even if you’re driving across the country.
Most people don’t realize, a big part of reviewing cars is being out in the middle of nowhere on photoshoots. This usually requires heading out before sunrise and not finishing up until after sunset. Finding a good location often means being hours away from civilization. You have to bring everything you need with you. I’ve used countless coolers in the past. From high-dollar Yeti and Pelican hard-sides to the cheapest soft-sided thermal bag I grabbed in Target at the last minute. The Ninja Frost Vault retails for $250, which puts it about $50 under the other premium brands. The specs are comparable as well, but how does it perform in the real world?
What are the specs of the Ninja Frost Vault Cooler?
The video production team at one of my old employers had a special-ordered hard-sided cooler that would literally fit a human body; now that was a big cooler. I bring this up because a few people who have seen the Ninja have commented that, “it’s huge.” It’s 32 inches across, 19 inches tall, and 17 inches deep. That’s on the outside. Inside the main compartment, it’s 22 inches, by 12 inches, by 10 inches. Sitting below that is the dry storage, also cold, that measures, 22 inches, by 10 inches, by 3 inches. The bottom drawer has two baskets so you can keep food separated.
The 50-quart Ninja Frost Vault weighs in at 29 pounds. A comparable 50-quart Pelican is 26 pounds, while a 45-quart Yeti is 30 pounds. Both of these coolers are priced at $300. I suppose it’s my own bias, but I generally think of Ninja as a brand with a value proposition. Saving 50 bucks on a product that costs a few hundred is right where I expect it to be. With that said, when we get into the $300 range, you can start looking at 12-volt refrigerators. But that’s a story for a later review.
How long will the Ninja Frost Vault keep drinks cold?
To test the cooler, I did load it up and take out to the RC flying field on a particularly hot day. And yes, it worked great and my drinks were ice cold all day. If you’re buying a cooler like this, you aren’t looking for hours of insulation, you’re after days. So, I set it up in my backyard, loaded it with food and drinks, instrumented it up, and recorded real data.
My goal was to replicate a camping trip where I left on Thursday morning and then returned on Sunday morning. Like all good camping trips, the weather unexpectedly took a turn on Saturday and a monsoon rolled through. I got the bonus of testing it out in the rain and during a windstorm.
I loaded the top with drinks, a couple of ice packs, and some actual homemade ice–it’s an old family recipe. In the bottom drawer, I stored some raw materials for sandwich artistry, a bag of oranges, and even some guacamole. You can see the data in the table below. Spoiler alert; even opening this several times a day to get drinks, it worked great for the four-day simulated camp-out. I even went out and sat on it and made my son listen to stories about that time I did the sportsthing while playing sportsball in the big state sportingball tournament when I was in highschool to make the camping simulation that much more realistic.
| 8am | 8pm | |
|---|---|---|
| Top/Drawer/Outside Temp | Top/Drawer/Outside Temp | |
| Thursday | 24°/49°/68° | 32°/41°/58° |
| Friday | 33°/37°/60° | 33°/41°/53° |
| Saturday | 34°/39°/59° | 39°/41°/53° |
| Sunday | 40°/41°/57° |
Ninja Frost Vault: The Verdict
When I think about my platonic ideal of a cooler, it’s a milled block of stainless steel that is literally bulletproof and could be thrown out of an airplane and still survive. But, that would be a horrible insulator and I’d need a forklift to get it in my trunk. The Ninja doesn’t feel cheap or flimsy, but it does feel like it would break if it were fully loaded and fell out of the back of my car onto concrete. That may be an unrealistic expectation. I’m not sure how many coolers like this would survive that, probably not a lot of them. The Ninja Frost Vault feels completely adequate to compete in the class.
| Ninja Frost Vault | |
|---|---|
| Ease Of Use | 8/10 |
| Quality | 7/10 |
| Durability | 6/10 |
| Value | 9/10 |
| Overall | 7.5/10 |
The molded handles work well. I prefer handles that fold down because you lose a couple of inches in width which helps with packing. I like the single over-center latch for keeping the lid secured. You can easily operate it one-handed, great when putting things back in the cooler, and the tension is low enough that kids can easily undo it. I’ve never really liked the T-buckles on Yetis if I’m honest. The sliding lock for the bottom drawer doesn’t seem as rugged. I can envision it getting kicked off by the ruggedized toe of a hiking boot while at a campsite.
The inside of the cooler is nice shiny plastic, which is super easy to clean after you use the drain on the side to empty the water. The rubber gasket for the lid feels like it will stay nice and soft for years and I suppose this a good time to mention that the Frost Vault has a 5-year warranty; the same as Yeti. Overall, this is a good cooler. It doesn’t bring anything new to the space but it definitely hits on value. For the hashtag vanlife crowd, they’re going to want to be able to tag more outdoorsy brands in their social media posts, so this isn’t going to be for them. For people who camp or overland to get away from that stuff, the Frost Vault will save a bit of cash and do the same job.