3.5 stars. Better than average, comparing apples to apples – meaning, it's NOT going to be a multi-day cooler, and it's not going to realistically be comparable to an injection or roto-molded cooler.
It has wheels, which roll under load. It has a telescoping handle that extends and collapses, with your assistance.
Is the handle wiggly and somewhat imprecise? Yes.
Are the wheels likely going to make it over trail or across shoreside sand? My educated guess is, almost certainly not.
Will I ever test it in those ways? Of course not – doing so sets it up to fail, and me to get aggravated.
We have a couple of much more substantial coolers, made by other manufacturers, that perform well the functions noted above.
Here was our rationale:
For $50 tax, we can do grocery shopping, offload refrigerated items into this cooler, in the car, put a frozen block (having pre-chilled the empty cooler) or two on top, below the lid, and carry on with any addtional errands.
With the cost of groceries, and fuel, this'll pay for itself pretty quickly.
What we needed, in this case, is a cooler that is:
-light weight
-largely open space inside
-will accomodate grocery store trips in which items need to be temporarily held at refrigerator-cold temperatures as we transfer from grocery store bagging to parking lot cooler. That's all. No more, no less.
Would I prefer it have a latching lid? Yes, but it doesn't.
Would I prefer it keep items frozen WITHOUT adding ice or frozen blocks? Of course I would.
Those coolers exist, to be sure, but they're also going to cost, minimally, 4x,5x or more than does this cooler. This should be obvious and readily apparent to people, but alas...
Do we expect to load it up and go to the beach, or a park, or camping, for the day, or days? No, of course not. This isn't the cooler for that.
Would you go camping wearing only flip-flops and then get mad at the flip-flops because your feet took the brunt of your decision?
I'd like to say no, but then, reading reviews here and elsewhere, across a range of products really, it wouldn't surprise me.
Be reasonably realistic. Inform yourselves, people!
In fact, we don't even put frozen grocery items in this cooler; those go into one of the much more robustly %26 precisely machined/assembled coolers earlier noted.
But items already cooled in the grocery store, that aren't already frozen/need to remain frozen/need to be frozen, work well in this cooler.
Summary: pre-chill the cooler, even if only while driving to/shopping the grocery store. Get groceries. Milk, fruit, greens, meats, cheeses, eggs, etc., go into this cooler. Close lid.
Put frozen items (ice creams especially, as there has clearly been recipe modifications over years that keep frozen treats what I'll call, "soft-frozen") into the higher end cooler/s, and carry on with your running around.
Get yourself and these items home, before hours and hours and...or expect that you may have some issues, obviously depending on outdoor temps, etc.