This is the Best Cooler We’ve Ever Tested

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The Oyster Tempo makes its competitors look like a first-grader’s insulated lunch box. Let that sink in. Interestingly, the star cooler was created by a company within a country which has decidedly little to do with the cooler business—their average summer temps range in the mild 60s to low 70sF. “We’re not cooler-users over here in Norway,” Ian Sandmæl, Oyster’s Chief Design Officer and co-founder, told me over a call. “I think the outsider perspective creates this opportunity where you’re not really familiar with a lot of the products in the market, you’re not familiar with even the weight of popular coolers, so you’re daring to look at it fresh.”

For a bit of context, let me back up. The pitch for the Oyster Tempo, which arrived in my inbox a few months back, nearly ended up in my trash. I get marketing emails hocking new, “innovative” gear constantly. Half of these pitches are irrelevant to climbers, grossly overhyped, or just plain boring. I rarely reply. But a few key phrases regarding the Tempo caught my attention: “the result of six years of intensive research and development,” “doesn’t need ice” (despite not being electric), and, most shockingly, “three times the internal space at nearly half the external size and stays three times colder for longer.” Frankly, it sounded too good to be true, but I had to see. I wrote back.

The Tempo works thanks to Oyster’s patented vacuum-insulated system. Think of your standard thermos, how it might keep your coffee hot (a little too hot) or water icy for hours or even days on end—that’s the kind of performance Oyster was aiming for, but in a bigger package. Delivering that kind of vacuum seal took some serious R&D.

“The lid is a sealed vacuum chamber,” explains Sandmæl. “And what we call the tub, the lower part, is also a sealed vacuum chamber. And what you’re fighting against is the vacuum that wants to escape, or the air that wants to enter into these vacuum chambers. So to be able to do that in an efficient way, we needed to use metal.”

For many reasons, aluminum was the chosen metal. Aluminum has a high degree of conductivity, it’s sustainable, and lightweight. The Oyster team spent three of the six years of development on the deep-drawing process, a shaping process that helps to maximize the retention of the material’s properties. “Being able to deep draw the aluminum down to these depths is an extremely difficult thing to do” says Sandmæl. “We’re working at the limits of what’s possible. It was a huge investment.”

They could have just welded the aluminum together, however that would have produced a much heavier product. Thanks to those years of research, the final Tempo clocks in at 12.1lbs, about half the weight of coolers with similar carrying capacities. Funnily enough some earlier prototypes actually weighed a little less, but the added weight in the end product meant slightly more durability.

“The Yeti you can probably toss out of your pickup truck, and it’s probably going to survive,” admits Sandmæl. “Ours might survive, but it might not survive, you know, because we had to strike the balance between durability and weight.”

A bonus perk of using aluminum is that, unlike traditional blends of plastic and polyurethane foam, the Tempo is entirely recyclable.

My experience with the Tempo was and continues to be wonderful. The cooler keeps things damn cold. I love how lightweight it is, and the fact that it easily packs a weekend’s worth of food for myself and my partner while being half the size of my other cooler (a Yeti).

The ice packs that come with the Tempo were designed to perfectly fill the bottom surface of the cooler. They’re thin, which means they take up less space, and intentionally designed: “We learned we wanted to have the ice packs melt at a certain temperature that’s custom-tailored to the performance of the cooler,” says Sandmæl. He explained that they melt at a temperature slightly lower than water. Oyster is designing ice packs for frozen goods, but those will not last as long as they will burn through more energy faster.

The Tempo is a breeze to clean. I basically don’t ever need to clean it, in fact, since I don’t use ice in it. And I love that I no longer need to worry about packing food in well-sealed waterproof containers.

One drawback of aluminum is that it is not all that durable. After a few months of testing the Tempo, there are a few dents on the outside. Evidently, this is not cause for concern. “We have carried out extensive torture testing during our R&D process and while there have been many instances of cosmetic dents and scratches,” reads Oyster’s site, “there have been very few instances of puncture and loss of vacuum.” Accordingly, I’d say despite the dings my Tempo has held up just fine.

I like that the cooler can be assembled without tools. It’s easy to switch between the hard handle and the strap. Both options are great, but I’ve preferred the hard handle for easier transfer between truck and the outdoors.

As a final feature worth noting, the Tempo can be opened with one hand and on either side of the cooler, which is nice—no more wrong-side-of-the-cooler snafus.

To optimize performance, the Oyster team focused on three key metrics: the core insulation, the thermal bridge between the lid and the bin, and the thermal circulation.

Core insulation limits heat transfer between the outside world and the inside of the cooler. It is primarily achieved via the vacuum seal. The thermal bridge is the point at which heat is most easily transferred—i.e. around the lid. A smaller thermal bridge means lower thermal conductivity. Both the core insulation and thermal bridge contribute to the cooler’s total heat transfer. All told the Tempo has roughly half the total heat transfer when compared to a traditional cooler.

Aluminum—again, this material was chosen for a variety of reasons—is largely to thank for the Oyster’s stellar thermal circulation. If you place an ice cube at the bottom of the Tempo and then feel the sidewall, it will feel cold, and that doesn’t happen with plastic. As a result, the food at the top of the cooler is just as cold as the food at the bottom. This, to me, was huge given that, in other coolers, I’ve had food at the top go bad even when ice was still at the bottom. Numbers from Oyster’s testing back this up: the company claims the Tempo’s thermal circulation is 380 times faster than that of a hard cooler (190 watts per meter kelvin vs. 0.5 watts per meter kelvin).

Overall, Oyster claims the Tempo stays three times colder. This is based off of internal temperature, beginning at a baseline of 0 degrees Celsius. Their testing indicates that after 10 hours, if the Tempo has risen to four degrees, a standard cooler will likely have risen to 12. Our sibling publication, Outside, put this to the test. You can find the results here (Spoiler: the Tempo simply smashed the Orca 26 Quart).

Aside from keeping food cold, the Tempo’s unique design means it packs more storage in a smaller area. It has a 23-liter storage capacity within 2,801.4 cubic inches of eternal size. For comparison, the Orca 26 Quart has a 24-liter storage capacity and is 6,1236.3 cubic inches.

Overall the Tempo exceeded my expectations, however, there is one obvious and fairly significant drawback—it costs $500. While it massively outperforms its competitors, it’s also about twice the price of coolers with similar carrying capacities. Thankfully, Oyster plans to make accessories as well as replacement parts over the coming months, which will make the Tempo an excellent long-term investment.