YETI Tundra 35 vs Roadie 24

The Roadie 24 is the cooler YETI now sells at the small end of the hard-sided range, in place of the Roadie 20 this page used to cover. It is a different shape from the one it replaced, which changes the comparison against the Tundra 35 more than you would expect from two coolers fourteen quarts apart.

Neither is an alternative to a 12V fridge-freezer on a long overland trip, but both are capable boxes for keeping perishables cold without power.

We have already compared the YETI 35 vs Yeti 45. This one goes the other way: how does the Tundra 35 compare with the smaller Roadie 24?

Review and Comparison: Choose the Tundra 35 or the Roadie 24?

Both are rotomoulded, both carry the build that YETI is known for, and both will outlast the vehicle you carry them in. The differences are in shape and in how you move them, not in how well they are made.

Features common to both coolers:

• Rotomoulded construction for durability
• Bearfoot non-slip feet, so the box stays put in a load bed or a boat
• A dedicated drain system rather than a plug you lose
• Insulation built for multi-day ice retention rather than an afternoon

The dimensions, side by side

These are the figures from each cooler’s Amazon listing, read on 26 October 2026:

• Tundra 35 — 21.38in wide x 16.13in deep x 15.75in tall, 1,400 cubic inches of interior, supplied with a dry goods basket
• Roadie 24 — 16.6in wide x 13in deep x 17.4in tall, 7.05kg (about 15.5lb) empty, supplied with the DoubleDuty shoulder strap, LipGrip handles and a Bestdam drain plug

Read those twice, because the interesting number is easy to miss: the Roadie 24 is the taller of the two. It gives up width and depth to the Tundra 35 but stands about an inch and a half higher. That is deliberate — the Roadie 24 was designed to take bottles standing upright, which the Roadie 20 could not do. If you have been putting wine or two-litre bottles in a cooler on their side and mopping up afterwards, that one measurement is the whole argument.

YETI’s Amazon listing does not state an empty weight for the Tundra 35; the earlier version of this page recorded it at 20lb, which is in the right area but is not a figure we can currently source.

Comparison

The Roadie 24 is the one you carry. The DoubleDuty strap goes over a shoulder and leaves a hand free, which matters when you are also carrying a chair and a dry bag from the vehicle to the water. The Tundra 35 has rope handles on two sides and expects two hands or two people, and once it is loaded you will want both.

The Tundra 35 is the one that stays put. Its footprint is wider and shallower, so it sits flat and low in a load bed or a roof box, and the extra width is what buys you the interior volume. Its lid hardware is the heavier of the two: the NeverFail interlocking hinge, the Interlock lid system and the Vortex drain are built for a box that gets opened and dragged for years rather than carried to a picnic.

So the choice is less about capacity than about the trip. One person on a day out, or a boat where the cooler moves with you, is a Roadie 24. A base camp, a long weekend for two, or anything where the cooler is loaded once and left in the vehicle, is a Tundra 35.

What Previous Buyers Said

As of 26 October 2026 the Tundra 35 carried 4.7 out of 5 stars from 4,828 ratings and the Roadie 24 4.8 out of 5 from 550. Both are strong, and the gap between them is not large enough to choose on.

The sample sizes are worth noting, though. The Tundra 35 has been on sale for years and has the feedback to match; the Roadie 24 2.0 is newer, and 550 ratings is a smaller body of evidence even if the average is marginally higher.

The complaint that has followed YETI hard coolers for as long as we have been writing about them is weight relative to interior size, and it applies more to the small end of the range. At about 15.5lb empty, the Roadie 24 is heavy for what it holds. Whichever you end up with, if you pack it full, lift it properly.

Conclusion

The Tundra 35 and the Roadie 24 are not substitutes for each other, and that is the honest answer to the question. The 35 and the 45 can stand in for one another; these two cannot.

Pick the Roadie 24 if the cooler has to travel with you under one arm, or if standing bottles upright solves a problem you actually have. Pick the Tundra 35 if it is going to live in the vehicle and you want the volume and the flat footprint. Buying the wrong one of these two is a shape mistake, not a size mistake.