First off, this cooler exceeded my expectations for build quality and performance. I was out in 100 degree heat for a race and still had lots of ice in the cooler into the evening. There are multiple cooler tests out there that put this cooler near the top of the heap for performance. My experience aligns with those test results.I guess the more interesting aspect of whether this cooler is right for you is the size and usability. One tends to think of a "soft-sided cooler" as something light weight that you throw a six pack and some lunch into, then sling it over your shoulder to carry into the track, or out to the camp site. I would say the ONLY downside to this cooler's performance and quality is that it carries "big". With my 6-pack, a 5lb bag of ice (it would hold more!) and some food, it was a bit of a task to carry. It does come with a nice shoulder strap, but I have realized that it is best suited to carrying from car to picnic site rather than anything that requires a long carry.The vacuum seal feature is a little confusing for some, but worth using to boost the performance of teh cooler for an outing. When you hook up the vacuum, you aren't sucking air out of the main compartment where your food and drinks are at. You are sucking air out of the middle layer between the insulation and the exterior. Air in that layer conducts heat from the exterior to the insulation. Since this is a soft-sided cooler, it's hard to engineer materials that are totally impermeable, so instead they've engineered a way to reduce air pressure for a limited amount of time (like how your bicycle innertubes lose air over time.)