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A lesser-explored product for instant cooling, these lightweight and portable towels are a hands-free option that feels great after a workout or a day in the sun. But with so many materials, sizes and brands to shop from, it can be tough to know which ones will actually leave you feeling refreshed.
That’s why we tested 10 top-rated cooling towels to see which were most effective at keeping us cool and comfortable under the summer sun with minimal hassle. Below, we’ve found the best one to give you instant relief in seconds, anytime or anywhere you need it.
The Mission Original Instant Cooling Towel delivered the best immediate cooling of any towel we tested. Lightweight and breathable, the towel is comfortable to wear and easy to pack in a gym bag, purse or large pocket.
The Mission Original Instant Cooling Towel was the first we tested in the pool, and over weeks of testing, no other towel knocked it from the top spot. The brushed microfiber material is lightweight and folds up nicely, making it easy to store in a bag, purse or large pocket when on the move. After soaking the towel with water from our pack, we only had to wring it out two or three times before it was drip-free.
What set the Mission cooling towel apart from the pack was that it truly provided an instant cooling sensation. After wetting and wringing it out, the instructions state to snap the towel three times to help activate the HydroActive Technology in the fabric. Mission claims this technology helps to amplify the natural evaporative cooling process and provides cooling effects up to 30 degrees below the average body temperature. While we didn’t calculate the exact degree change, cooling relief did occur immediately, which was shocking enough to elicit an audible “wow” from our tester. The towel feels damp but not in a way that drips or leaves wet patches behind on the skin. Instead, it feels like something pulled from a well-spun laundry wash cycle: cool but not heavy with moisture.
Although the cooling feeling dissipates after about 40 minutes, the Mission Original Instant Cooling Towel provided more relief in the first five to 10 minutes than some towels provided throughout their entire wear. And that instant cool feeling is exactly what we’re after on a hot, sticky day in the sun.
Jillian Tracy/CNN Underscored
The Mission cooling towel was also the most comfortable to wear. The brushed microfiber feels soft against the skin, and the towel is breathable, so you don’t feel bogged down or made hotter by the fabric around your neck. At 33 by 10 inches, the towel easily covered the back of our necks and front of our chests and would nicely tuck into the collar of a shirt without adding too much extra bulk. Though it doesn’t come with any included carrying case or pouch for storage, we didn’t hesitate to throw the towel back into our bag after we were done using it, since it wasn’t damp enough to damage any devices or valuables. The towel is also machine-washable and dryer safe, so if you want to refresh it quickly between uses, just chuck it in with your normal laundry load.
At $15, the Mission Original Instant Cooling Towel isn’t the cheapest towel we tested, but it’s well within the affordable range for cooling towels. We think the towel’s performance is worth the extra few dollars of investment it’ll cost you.
From start to finish, the Mission Original Instant Cooling Towel was easy to use and care for and provided the best instant relief of any towel we tested. Pair that with its comfortable feel, ample surface area and a selection of 14 colors and prints, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better-performing or more versatile cooling towel on the market today.
In researching cooling towels, we looked for those that were top-rated by customers, included innovative technology promises and came from well-established brands across various prices. We settled on a final pool of 10 towels to test over several weeks during sunny spring and summer days in New York City.
To simulate that hot, sweaty feeling you get while spending a day outdoors, we tested the performance and feel of each towel following a two-mile tempo run in temperatures averaging 75 degrees Fahrenheit. We evaluated the instant cooling effects of the towel and noted how they changed as we continued to wear them outside for at least 30 minutes following our run. We followed the before-use instructions for each towel, packing each in our CamelBak Hydration Pack as we ran and using room-temperature water to wet them. We evaluated each cooling towel using the following criteria for our reviews.
Performance
Ease of use: We followed the directions provided by each towel for activation and noted how easy the towel was to get fully wet and wring out.
Relief: We noted if these towels offered any immediate relief and were effective in helping us cool down more quickly. We also observed if the towel seemed significantly cool to the touch and if it was at a temperature cooler than the air.
Use time: We monitored how long the towels stayed cool to the touch as we wore them and how much time had passed before we felt like we needed to rewet or reactivate the towel.
Build
Comfort: We assessed how comfortable the towels felt to wear around the back of our neck and noted if the towels felt particularly soft, heavy or irritating to the skin.
Storage: Once we felt cooled off, we checked how damp the cooling towel was and if we thought it needed to be put in an extra container to prevent other items in our bag from getting wet. We also noted if the towel came with a container or pouch to put it in. We also paid attention to how the towel packed down once fully dry, noting if it was easy to place in a bag or took up a significant amount of room.
Overall design: We also considered the size of the towels, how much surface area they could cover and if there were any notable features about the design that made the towel perform better or worse than the others in our testing pool.
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.
Cooling towels work through a method called evaporative cooling. You’ll notice that every cooling towel requires you to wet it and wring it out to activate it. As you wear the damp towel, the water from the towel evaporates into the air. As it evaporates, it also helps direct heat away from your body and into the surrounding air, leaving you feeling cooler. The towel’s fabric will also help physically block the sun from hitting your skin, further aiding in keeping you cool. Many cooling towels on the market today even come with UPF protection. You’ll want to shift and rotate the towel every few minutes while you wear it for maximum cooling. This re-exposes the sections pressed closest to your skin to the air and cools it back down.
It should be noted that the cooling effects of the towels are going to feel different depending on the environment you’re in. If you’re using a cooling towel in places with low to moderate humidity, like New York City during the weeks we did this testing, the cooling effect will feel stronger since the air is drier and the evaporation rate is faster. But on a sticky Florida day where the humidity is upward of 90%, the towel will store more heat since the air is already saturated with water and evaporation is slower. In more humid climates, the cooling effects are shorter and you’ll find you need to re-wet or reactivate the cooling towels more frequently if you want to stay cool over long periods.
Cooling towels act like an artificial temperature regulator, helping to cool your body when exposed to direct sun or heat for long periods. In cases where you might not be able to find nearby shade or a breeze, like on a construction site or in a crowded summer amusement park, a cooling towel can help you temporarily fight off symptoms associated with heat stroke or exhaustion. At the very least, they offer a nice sensation that won’t leave your clothes completely drenched. A cooling towel won’t lower your core body temperature or instantly cool your skin but can offer superficial relief to the areas it’s applied to.
Unlike regular bath towels made with absorbent materials like cotton, cooling towels are usually made with synthetic materials like nylon, polyester or microfiber which are better for speeding up evaporation. They also retain moisture without remaining sopping wet, so your clothes and skin stay drier. Additionally, some cooling towels are crafted with specific features, like Mission’s HydroActive Technology in our top pick, that claim to help increase the performance of the towel for a greater cooling effect.
Cooling towels made of PVA material, like the Frogg Togg and Chill Pal options we tested, should never go in the freezer since freezing them makes them brittle. However, they can be stored in the fridge between uses to add an additional cooling feeling. Although you can freeze other cooling towels like mesh and microfiber blends, freezing them completely makes them stiff and harder to drape across your body for maximum relief.
If you’re looking for an extra oomph of coolness, the best tip is to store wet cooling towels (mesh, microfiber or PVA) in the fridge between uses to keep them chilled. Or for a quick fix, pop them in the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes to drop the temperature. Just don’t allow them to fully freeze.
The colder the water you soak them in, the colder your cooling towel will feel. We don’t need to convince you that plunging a towel in ice water will feel nicer on hot skin than soaking it at room temperature. We tested all the towels in our pool with room temperature water to try to get a fair read as to whether the towel provided additional cooling effects or not.
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