The best cooling towels, tested by editors

We wanted to love this polyvinyl alcohol towel since the material gives it a nice spongey, cellulose-type feel. But ultimately it didn’t offer enough immediate relief to be a top pick. Over 30 minutes, the towel did get cooler as the water evaporated from it; it was even still mostly cool when we went to grab it from our bag the next day. However, it didn’t offer an instantly refreshing feeling to help cool you off when you’re in desperate need. The towel is also difficult to fold and store when dry since the PVA material turns stiff. Your best bet is to store it wet in the included plastic carrying pouch. If it develops mildew or an odor from being stored wet, you can soak the towel in bleach and water for an hour or two, followed by a wash cycle in your washing machine. While this towel probably feels great when left in a cooler of ice water at the beach or park, it doesn’t perform great for those on the move with more limited access to water sources.

We liked the Arctic Cool Instant Cooling Towel since it was easy to use and offered gentle cooling relief for roughly 35 minutes. The mesh material feels high quality and is comfortable to wear, but our main problem was with the overall size of the towel. At 27 by 15 inches, the towel was both the shortest and widest of the testing pool, meaning it didn’t provide as much surface area for relief. Unlike other towels that covered our back and shoulders or draped down the front of our chest, we could really only hang the Arctic Cool towel from the back of our neck or drape it over our head.

From the same brand as our top pick, the Mission Max Plus Cooling Towel has many of the same features we liked in the Original Instant Cooling Towel. The microfiber design feels well constructed and the towel is easy to store, but the material is slightly thicker, making it harder to fully wet, wring out and snap. Plus, the cooling effects were not as instantly significant as Mission’s Original Cooling Towel. However, the towel did retain a cool feel for about 45 minutes before needing to be rewet, which was longer than most other towels we tested.

The only other PVA towel we tested, the Frogg Togg Chilly Pad, had many of the same issues as the Chill Pal PVA towel. It was cooler than our body temperature but required significantly more water to get fully soaked than any other towel we tested (we’re talking a solid 40 ounces or so of water). Like the Chill Pal towel, it’s also stiff when fully dry, meaning you’ll want to store it in the included plastic container while it’s still wet. The container is bulky to carry in a small bag or purse, though. The towel also released a significant amount of pink dye during prewashing and wear, enough to temporarily stain our sink bowl and hands, so we’d be careful about wearing this towel with any light-colored clothing for fear of staining.

The Chill Pal Mesh Cooling Towel remained cool the longest of the towels we tested, lasting roughly 45 minutes before needing to be rewet. Unfortunately, it fell flat in providing instant cooling relief. The towel is also quite long, with a 40-inch length that makes it feel like a scarf when draped around the neck. While it’s easy to wet and use — and even comes with a plastic pouch and carabiner clip for storage — we still found the Mission Original Towel more comfortable to wear and better at providing instant relief.

Sukeen Cooling Towel was the least expensive per towel in our testing pool, and it fell somewhere in the middle in terms of results. We found the mesh-blend towels to be slightly less comfortable overall than the microfiber ones, but the Sukeen towel was not irritating to the skin and had a long 40-inch span that could easily be wrapped around your shoulders or looped around your neck. We really only felt relief when we had the towel tight against our skin, wrapping it like a shawl around our shoulders and back. However, the towel did stay damp for about 40 minutes before needing reactivation, which was at the longer end of our testing pool. All in all, it’s a fine towel — not amazing in any way but you will feel a tad cooler with it than without it. This towel is only available in packs of four or more on Amazon right now, which might be more product than you need, so we’d still recommend grabbing the Mission Original towel for a couple dollars more.

The Ergodyne Cooling Towel didn’t seem to get as cold as the other towels, despite being wet with water of the same temperature. Plus, it only offered relief when pressed more forcefully into the skin. The towel was a bit thicker than the mesh blend and microfiber towels but thinner than the PVA ones, making it easy to wet and wring out. It did start to lose its cool feel after about 25 minutes, which was quicker than most other towels we tested. Overall, this towel was underwhelming, and we felt more instantly cooled off when we found a shady spot under a tree or were hit with a light breeze.

Though the Alfalmo Cooling Towel was easy to wet and wring out, it didn’t offer any real cooling effects. We only felt relief when we pressed the towel against our skin or held it taut around our neck. It also dried up the quickest of all the towels we tested, becoming fully dry in about 30 minutes, and it started to lose coolness after just 10 minutes of wear. Though the towel is thin and lightweight, it lacked the cooling and staying power we experienced with the other cooling towels.

The Tough Outdoors Cooling Towel felt the most like a regular bath towel. While the fabric was easy to soak, this was the only towel that left our skin feeling wet while we wore it. Though the towel was not dripping or soaking our clothes, it still left behind slick, wet patches on our arms, chest and neck. The polyester material felt very thin and seemed easy to stretch out, making us think it could easily lose its shape over time. The towel held a cool feel for about 40 minutes but that was mostly because it remained damp throughout wear and was harder to fully wring out than the others.