ChillTest: Cooler Ice TestChillTest: Cooler Ice Test
Your cooler claims it holds ice for days. Weigh the meltwater and find out what it really does.
Download on the App StoreFeatures
One number for your cooler
Put ice in, wait a few hours, weigh the water that collected. ChillTest turns that into a single heat-leak figure in watts per degree — a property of the box itself, not of the day you tested it.
Physics, not a guess
Melting ice holds the inside of a cooler at freezing, and it takes a fixed 333.55 kJ to melt a kilogram of it. Every gram of meltwater is a known amount of heat that got in, so the result is measured rather than estimated.
A kitchen scale is the whole kit
No thermometer, no sensor to pair, nothing left inside the box. A measuring cup works too if that is what you have on hand.
Answers for the trip you are packing for
How long 10 lb of ice lasts at 90°F, how much ice a two-night trip needs, whether the expensive rotomolded chest really doubles the cheap one. Adjust for lid opening, sun and how full the box is.
It refuses to show a wrong number
If the ice melted out, if a gel pack was used instead of ice, or if it was barely warmer outside than in, the run is not a valid measurement — so no figure appears. You get an explanation of what to change instead.
Every cooler you own, ranked
Keep as many boxes as you like, each with its own measurement history, sorted best-first. The ranking is yours, measured in your conditions, not copied from a spec sheet.
Every cooler claims to hold ice for days. ChillTest lets you find out what yours actually does — with a kitchen scale and a bag of ice.
No thermometer. No sensor to pair. Just melted water on a scale.
HOW IT WORKS
While ice is melting, the inside of a cooler sits at exactly 0°C (32°F). That makes the melted water a measuring instrument: every gram that melts represents a known amount of heat that leaked in. Weigh the water, tell ChillTest how long it sat and how warm it was outside, and the app works out a single number for your cooler — its heat leak, in watts per degree.
That number belongs to the cooler itself, not to the day you measured it. So once you have it, ChillTest can answer the questions you actually have:
• How long will 10 lb of ice last at 90°F?
• How much ice do I need for a two-night trip?
• Is the expensive rotomolded box really twice as good as the cheap one?
NO SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
A kitchen scale or a measuring cup is all you need. There is no thermometer to buy, no sensor to pair, nothing to leave inside the box.
ANY ICE YOU HAVE
Block ice, cubes, crushed, frozen bottles — set the size by weight, by volume or by counting pieces. Ice straight from a freezer is colder than freezing and lasts a little longer; ChillTest accounts for that too.
IT TELLS YOU WHEN A MEASUREMENT DOES NOT COUNT
This is the part most guides skip. If the ice melted completely, the box never stayed at freezing and the result means nothing — so ChillTest refuses to show a number instead of showing a wrong one. It does the same when the box was not pre-chilled, when the run was too short, or when a gel pack was used instead of ice. Every warning explains what went wrong and what to change.
COMPARE YOUR OWN COOLERS
Keep as many boxes as you like, each with its own measurement history. They sort best-first, so the ranking is yours — measured in your conditions, not copied from a spec sheet.
WHAT YOU GET
• One performance figure per cooler, with an estimated range
• Ice-remaining curves for any temperature and ice load
• Required-ice calculator for a target number of hours
• Adjustments for lid opening, sun and how full the box is
• A step-by-step measuring guide explaining why each step matters
• Metric or imperial, grams or ounces, °C or °F
• Works entirely offline; nothing leaves your device
GOOD FOR
Camping and car camping, fishing trips, tailgating, road trips, beach days, hunting, and anyone deciding whether the next cooler is worth the money.
These are physical estimates for planning and comparison. Real trips vary with how often the lid opens, where the box sits and what goes inside it. ChillTest measures how fast ice melts — it is not a food-safety device and does not tell you whether food is safe to eat.