How Well Does The Ninja FrostVault Cooler With A Dry Zone Work? (According To Users)

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Appliance brand Ninja is best known for its various high-performance kitchen gadgets, such as its various sizes of blenders or its Creami and Swirl ice cream makers, and all of their relevant accessories. As with any brand, though, Ninja has been known to branch out on occasion and try product avenues that are tangentially related to its wheelhouse while still being new territory. Specifically, Ninja sells a variety of coolers designed to keep your refreshments preserved, even if you're miles away from your kitchen or back porch.

One of the heftiest models of cooler Ninja offers is the 45 qt FrostVault, a fully-fledged ice chest mounted on a pair of all-terrain wheels designed for camping, tailgating, and other outdoor festivities. In addition to the traditional open compartment, keeping your drinks chilled when stored with ice, there's also a "Dry Zone" compartment for snacks you'd prefer not to get wet. At $299.99, it's definitely a bit more of an investment than you might expect from something meant to haul your drinks around, but based on feedback from shoppers on platforms like Amazon, as well as reviews from appliance-focused publications, it seems to be a mostly worthwhile investment.

The Ninja FrostVault cooler has an internal storage of 45 quarts. That's enough space to store 68 cans of soda by themselves, 40 pounds of ice cubes by themselves, or 40 cans of soda and 20 pounds of ice together. The whole thing is shored up with three inches of internal insulation, which not only allows it to keep everything in the chest fridge-temp but ensures that any ice you place in the chest will remain frozen for days on end.

Of course, coolers aren't just for drinks; you also use them to preserve snacks and meals. However, if you just throw a sandwich in with a bunch of ice, it's going to get gross and soggy. This is where the FrostVault shows its secret weapon: the Dry Zone storage chamber. In a separate compartment beneath the main chest, there's a slide-out drawer that receives cooling from the chest without receiving any water or condensation. Just dump some ice into the chest and stick a sandwich in the Dry Zone drawer, and it'll be kept at a food-safe sub-40 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as the ice lasts with no sogginess.

The FrostVault is also equipped with both a reinforced handle and all-terrain, puncture-resistant wheels, so you can safely cart it around with you on all your outdoor adventures. Both the lid and drawer latch are lockable, so you don't need to worry about marauding pests, either.

Any cooler can promise you the world, but it's another matter entirely whether it can deliver on those promises. Luckily for Ninja, it seems like the FrostVault cooler has the chills to pay the bills based on user and critic feedback.

The cooler has a healthy 4.8 out of 5 star user rating on Amazon based on 317 user reviews. Users generally enjoy the efficacy of its cold storage, the smoothness of its rolling wheels, and the impressive longevity of its temperature retention. One user noted that they left the house with the cooler full of ice, and two full days later, all the ice inside was still frozen and frosty. The only real complaints any of these reviews make are that the wheels don't roll as well over soft terrain like sand and that all the extra insulation makes it a bit heavy.

Ashley Thieme of Tom's Guide had similar praise for the FrostVault, giving it a 4.5 out of 5 star rating in her review. As an experiment, she packed the chest full of ice and left it alone to see how long it would last. It took five full days before the ice finally melted. While she notes the price is steep, it's a worthwhile investment for the performance alone.

Jonathan Chan of Reviewed.com was a little more stringent in his critique, noting that there are better coolers out there for long-term cooling and storage. However, for campers and day-trippers, especially families, he says it's still a quality choice.