Test: Which insulated cup keeps ice frozen longest?

TAMPA (FOX 13) - You know Florida can melt down an icy drink in a hot second.

We wanted to see which cups keep in the cold longest, for the best price.

What better place and time to compare brands than Florida in the heat of summer?

Meet the contenders:

Yeti – Around $35 dollars

Corkscile – Pushing $30

RTIC (pronounced arctic) – Around $13

Ozark Trail (Walmart) – Around $13

Hydra – Just under $9

Some of the brands promise specific hour lengths it will keep drinks cold.

Corksicle, for example, says nine hours. RTIC promises 24 hours.

Others make more generic offers. Hyrda says "keeps ice cold two times longer."

Ozark Trail doesn’t offer a specific amount of time. Yeti says it will keep a drink as "cold or hot as science allows."

We filled each stainless steel, insulated tumbler to the top with ice and topped it off with cold water, then headed to the roof of the television station where the heat was brutal.

We placed the tumblers, along with plastic and Styrofoam cups to compare, and checked back at the height of the midday sun.

No surprise, our plastic cup was out of ice and the water was only barely cool. Styrofoam still had some ice in it.

All of the cold cups still had ice remaining. The cubes were smaller, with some melting, but overall still ice water, cold and refreshing.

As the day went on the sun did its thing, but did the cups do theirs?

By midafternoon, after five hours, the most expensive of the pack -  Yeti and Corksicle – plus the Hydra, had no ice left.

The last cups standing with ice were Ozark Trail and RTIC.

Fast forward to the end of the day, eight hours since we put the cups up on the roof, and RTIC didn't live up to its promise of keeping ice for 24 hours.

However, the water felt the coldest of the bunch.

YETI and Ozark Trail felt similar to RTIC and each other.

Corksicle was only slightly less cold.

Hydra was the least cold.

The takeaway? When it comes to holding the cold, cheaper options can hold their own.