Ninja FrostVault cooler review: Perfectly chill
Keeping your food and drink cool in summer is always a challenge in Australia, but the Ninja FrostVault cooler does a good job, while also keeping your food dry.
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Pros
- The dry storage drawer is genius
- Keeps ice for about 48 hours
- Robust build quality
Cons
- Quite heavy, even when empty
- 28L model is still quite bulky for its capacity
I never really thought I would be reviewing a cooler here on BTTR, but here we are. And as it turns out, the Ninja FrostVault cooler is actually one of my favourite products of the year.
It all comes down to some intelligent design decisions. The team at Ninja has created a product that intelligently solves a problem – keeping your food away from cold, wet ice in a cooler – by stick a drawer underneath the main ice compartment.
It seems so simple, but it works so very well. I’m not going to lie — I was showing this off at the family Christmas gathering, humble-bragging about the fact that my ice was still ice, our food was cold and dry and the drinks were crisp and fresh.
What is the FrostVault offering?
Available in two sizes, the Ninja FrostVault is a portable cooler.
There’s no power, no batteries or anything like that. It’s simply an insulated box for transporting and cooling food and drink with ice. The lid latches down securely, helping keep the cold air inside.
I tested the 28 Litre version, but there’s a 47 Litre version as well. The 28 Litre version is enough to hold uptown 26 cans with ice, or 48 cans with no ice.
The 47 Litre version, meanwhile, can hold 45 cans with ice or 80 cans without ice.
The cooler keeps things cool with 7 cm thick insulated walls. That also makes it rather big and heavy — you’re looking at 9.4 kg for the 28L and 12.9 kg for the 47L, without putting anything inside.
But Ninja makes it look good. Each FrostVault cooler comes in three different colour options, which include cloud white, lakeshore blue and slate grey.
The biggest feature with the FrostVault though isn’t its size, colour, or weight. It’s the Dry Zone drawer at the bottom of the cooler.
Instead of dropping your food containers in with the ice and water, Ninja has added a drawer at the front of the cooler. You can slide it out and add in any food or container, so long as it’s not too tall, and the FrostVault will keep it at food safe temperatures of under 4ºC.
Honestly, it’s genius, and it works.
What does the FrostVault do well?
I filled the FrostVault up with ice at 11am on Christmas Day. 48 hours later, most of the ice had melted, but there were still bits of ice floating through the water.
I don’t have a thermometer that can give me an accurate reading of the drawer temperature, but I can tell you it was still cold to touch 48 hours after I first put the ice in there.
At Christmas, my brother-in-law’s cooler, which was filled with ice at about the same time, was completely melted by the time we ate dinner.
Now I’ll add a disclaimer here and say that the time it takes for the ice to melt and go warm will depend on how it’s used and where you use it. For this review, the FrostVault was sitting inside the kitchen of a home without air conditioning for most of Christmas Day, and has been in my garage since we got home.
If you stuck it in the heat of the Australian summer sun, it would likely melt a bit quicker.
But two days of use from a single bag of ice is solid performance. And the fact you can keep your food dry is even better – we kept the Apple sauce and some chocolate in the drawer for Christmas, and it was cold when we pulled it out hours later.
Tracking the ice melting over 48 hours. 1st image is fresh ice, second is after 24 hours, third is 36 hours and fourth is after 48 hours.
What could the FrostVault improve?
Ninja supplied me with the 28 Litre version for this review, and if I’m honest, it’s too small for me.
I think it would be great for a tradie or single camper who only needs to pack enough stuff for one. But when you have a family of four, the 47 Litre will be the way to go, particularly for storing food in the dry zone drawer,
That capacity challenge is even more noticeable when you factor in the bulk of the FrostVault. The 28L version measures in at 480 × 620 × 480 mm, and feels almost as big as my older esky, which holds a lot more.
Obviously, the bulk is from the insulated body, but I’d love to see it slightly more compact for future versions.
Verdict
Occasionally, it’s the simplest ideas that leave the most lasting impressions. The Ninja FrostVault cooler is just a superb idea executed really well.
By adding a space below the main compartment for storing food, which uses the ice from the main compartment to keep it cool, Ninja has turned something quite dull into something that’s impressive.
It’s far from the cheapest cooler on the market, but if you go on plenty of picnics, or go camping regularly, then the dry zone compartment of the Ninja FrostVault is worth the investment.
Buy the Ninja FrostVault cooler online
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