Soft coolers beat hard coolers for beach days.

Yes, get a soft-sided cooler with a decent shoulder strap.

Hard coolers are great for camping trips where you need ice for three days, but for a single day at the beach they’re unnecessarily heavy and awkward to carry through sand. A good soft cooler — think Yeti Hopper Flip, RTIC Soft Pack, or even a budget Ozark Trail version — keeps drinks cold for a full day, weighs maybe 3 pounds empty, and slings over your shoulder so both hands are free for chairs and umbrellas.

The key tradeoff: soft coolers leak less ice retention than rotomolded hard coolers after about 12 hours. For a beach day starting at 10am and ending at sunset, that doesn’t matter. What matters is not breaking your back hauling a 30-pound plastic box across hot sand.

Buy one with a waterproof zipper and thick insulation. Don’t spend $400 on a Yeti unless you really want to. The $50 RTIC works fine.