At first glance, the Oyster Tempo looks like any ordinary cooler, albeit with an aluminum build that makes it look more premium than your typical rotomolded ice box. However, there’s a lot more to it than the all-metal shell, as it employs an entirely new patented system that allows it to “radically improve the performance of traditional coolers.”
According to the outfit, they identified three major thermal drivers, which are key to making a cooler work efficiently. And they incorporated improvements on all three fronts for their design, allowing it to perform at an elevated level compared to the typical coolers we use to keep our food and drinks cool all year round.
The Oyster Tempo is a 24-quart cooler that measures 19.4 x 12.6 x 11.8 inches (width x height x depth) and weighs just 12.3 pounds, making it smaller and much lighter than rotomolded 24-quart ice boxes. With that 24-quart main chamber, it can accommodate up to 36 cans of your favorite beverage, albeit with no room inside for any ice, which isn’t an issue because this cooler can actually work even without ice. Instead, it’s designed to use the outfit’s Thermal Ice Packs, which can provide the chilling temperatures while using just a fraction of the room ice cubes will otherwise take up.
The outfit also recommends chilling your cans beforehand, which should further elevate the cooler’s overall thermal performance. How much better is it at cooling? According to the outfit, it gets three times colder than typical premium coolers while maintaining its temperatures for longer, which comes courtesy of its three key thermal drivers, namely the highly-insulating inner container, the thermal bridge that minimizes conductivity between the interior and exterior, and its super-efficient thermal circulation, which claims to cool down the air inside at a pace that’s 380 times faster than your average hard cooler. Seriously.
The Oyster Tempo has a unique lid that can be opened from one side and lifted up for easy access to its contents, as well as opened from both sides and removed entirely, allowing you to open it any way you prefer. It comes with two carrying options: a metal handle and a shoulder strap, either of which you can attach to hardware on the sides. Do note, you can only attach one at a time, so you’ll have to choose whether you want to carry it in one hand or tote it over your shoulder.
According to Oyster, the cooler is designed to be taken apart with no tools, making it easy to disassemble everything for thorough cleaning. Because it’s made from aluminum, it’s not going to be as hardwearing as your rotomolded staples. That means, if a bear ends up fancying your supplies, the darn beast is probably going to destroy the cooler. As such, the outfit offers a return policy that involves bear attacks – if a bear mauls the cooler into dishevel, you can actually get a replacement. Of course, we don’t know how you can prove it was a bear attack and not just your drunk friends, but we’ll digress.
The Oyster Tempo is now available for preroder, priced at $605.