Is This the New King of Luxury Coolers? Yes and No

The Oyster Tempo is billed as a cooler that doesn’t need ice to keep contents cool. Here’s what we learned about it after a month of testing.

By Hayley Helms

Published May 31, 2024

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Back in the spring of 2023, a new cooler company stepped onto the scene, offering what was heralded as the “first ever vacuum insulated cooler.” Similar to your Yeti or Hydro Flask insulated water bottle, the selling point was that the cooler, which took six years of development, could contents cold without additional ice.

After a month of testing in both real-world and laboratory settings, I can break down exactly what this iceless cooler is best for, where it hits… and where it ultimately misses.

Oyster says you won’t need ice — but you probably will

What initially sold me on the Oyster Tempo Performance Cooler was the claim that it doesn’t any additional help keeping items cool beyond the frozen proprietary ice packs that ship with the cooler.

My testing revealed that while this is technically true, and you can get away with using just an ice pack, I wouldn’t recommend that tactic for multi-day trips or even hotter-than-average day missions.

I tested the iceless cooler in both real-world and controlled settings, to see just how well it performed with both its included ice pack and a standard five-pound bag of ice. With a fully packed cooler and a very frozen ice pack, the cold from the ice pack lasted about 12 hours — far less than what Oyster promises.

On a call with the brand’s founders, I asked how cold retention compared with rotomolded competitors, and was told it depends on how the cooler is tested. (This is true for all cooler testing.) However, I was told that the heat loss is around half of what a traditional cooler suffers — it’s 30–40 percent better. I didn’t experience that in my testing. Although none of the items in my cooler ever got hot, they warmed to the point that I didn’t feel comfortable storing perishable food in the Tempo without the guarantee of ice pack replacements.

When I took the Tempo with me camping in the Sierra Nevadas, the outside temperature was 79 degrees Fahrenheit. The cooler was packed full with chilled food and had its proprietary ice pack inside, plus another small ice pack. We opened the Oyster minimally and kept it either in our covered GoFast camper shell or in the shade of a tree at our campsite.

We had a Dometic freezer plugged into a nearby power source, and each morning would have to swap out the Oyster’s ice pack for a fresh one. We did that for three days. The Oyster stayed cool inside, sure … but the ice packs would regularly thaw.

For the next experiment, at a backyard barbecue, I took leftover ice that I had had in my Orca cooler and put it in the Oyster with no food or drinks. We kept the Tempo in direct sunlight; the temperature outside was in the low 80s. Without opening the Tempo, the ice lasted for 24 hours without any food inside, but there was a half-inch of melt water in the cooler by the end of it.

For my third experiment, I tracked the Oyster for two consecutive six-hour blocks. I started the cooler empty with an internal temperature of 58ºF. For the first block, I added the Oyster ice pack and a selection of food and drink in the cooler, and tracked the temperatures every 30 minutes. Overall, the temperature of the internal aluminum wall raised by three degrees, but the can of wine I tracked got warmer by 10ºF. Then I took all the contents out, got the cooler back up to 58ºF, and repeated the experiment with a five-pound bag of ice and the same food and drinks. After six hours, the internal temperature of the Tempo was lower by eight degrees, and the can was a full 14 degrees cooler.

Overall, the Tempo works very well with ice inside — even just a little frozen stuff. I could still fit plenty of food and drinks inside the Oyster even with the ice, and it performed much better than it did with ice packs alone.

The Tempo is easy to take apart and clean

Because the Oyster is supposed to function without ice, and because it relies on vacuum insulation, there’s no drain spout on the bottom of the cooler. This is a minor annoyance if you end up using ice like I did, but not the end of the world; the cooler is so lightweight, it’s easy to turn it over and drain the water out completely. In addition, the lid of the Tempo comes all the way off, and the hinges can be taken apart, cleaned and re-assembled easily.

The Tempo is easy to transport

The Tempo only weighs 12 pounds — so even with a five-pound bag of ice, it’s still easy to haul around. Rotomolded coolers can quickly reach twice the weight of the Tempo, and if you’re just going out for the day, cutting down on weight is a very appealing option. The Tempo comes with both a fabric strap and an aluminum handle, which are easy to swap out whenever you feel like switching it up.

The Tempo cools down quickly — but it also heats up quickly, too

Aluminum is lightweight, strong and efficient, all of which make it a great material for a cooler. However, aluminum also has a high thermal conductivity, which means it heats up quickly — and passes heat to other objects just as quickly.

I didn’t love picking up the cooler when it had been sitting in the full sun for even 30 minutes — one temperature reading I took of the outer lid was well over 100ºF, which is very uncomfortable to be toting around (especially if you’re in shorts and the cooler bumps into you). The Tempo never heated up internally to anywhere near triple digits, but I’d suggest keeping yours in the shade as much as possible to avoid any errant heat transfer.

The Oyster Tempo is sleek, small enough to go along on any adventure and works well — with ice. Although I found the cooler to be lacking in the ice pack arena, I think with the proper cooling and storage, it could keep food and drink cool enough to enjoy for a single day. However, unless you have a way to bring along frozen back-up ice packs, I’d leave it at home for multi-day adventures.

Oyster Tempo Alternatives

Although there are no other aluminum coolers quite like the Oyster Tempo, we can recommend some tried-and-true options using other materials that will get the job done.

Although it’s a couple pounds heavier than the Tempo, Yeti’s Roadie 24 Hard Cooler stores almost as many cans, and keeps ice for up to two days (depending on conditions). If you want something a little lighter that’s also great for day use, the Camelbak Chillbak 30 is our top pick for soft backpack coolers that pack a punch. The Chillbak even comes with an integrated six-liter water reservoir, so you can keep your group hydrated as well as nourished.

CONCLUSIONS: WHO IS THIS FOR?

The Oyster Tempo is the ideal cooler for the luxury-minded set that wants the best, and newest, of everything. Were you the type to line up outside of your nearest Apple store to get the first iPhone in 2007? Then this is right up your alley. It’s gorgeous, lightweight — and effective, at least for a single day trip.

However, the Tempo comes with a pretty serious drawback. The same lightweight aluminum material that allows it to be vacuum insulated, and that keeps weight down to less than 15 pounds, also heats up extremely quickly — negating the claim that you’ll only need one ice pack to keep your cooler contents ice cold for more than a couple days.

If you want a hard-sided cooler that’s as light as possible, the Oyster Tempo sits in a class of its own. However you can easily find other excellent coolers for far less money if those features aren’t your top priorities.