Ice Barrel 500 Review (Don't Buy, Until You Watch This)

– This is the brand new Ice Barrel 500, and today I’m gonna share what the experience is like using it, and is this thing actually worth your money. If you plan to buy the Ice Barrel 500 or any ice barrel, use discount code Shervin. Click the link in

the description. That’ll help support the channel so we can keep making videos like this. Now this is one of three of the current available Ice Barrel products. This is a cold plunge, so it’s insulated to keep it cold. It’s also UV protected by the lid and the outsides,

and you wanna put water in here. Keep the water cold with ice or a water cooler. That’s coming soon by Ice Barrel. I’m gonna share kind of what the experience is like getting in, but before that, let’s show you how it shows when it arrives at your house.

So let’s cut to the unboxing experience. The box is pretty big. It fit through the front door, but it won’t fit through the back door so we actually have to open it up, and I’m like, 90% sure it’s gonna squeeze through our back door after it’s open. A

massage here and there. Would you look at that, here’s the lid to the top. So we can take this off. This is the inside. We have the ice barrel bag where it’s usually we get some nice outdoor covers so we can

cover that thing when the weather’s really

crazy here in New York. It’s gonna snow, rain, wind so any level of protection is nice. We’ve got some caps for the drain, replacement drains and a little spout. It is a bit slippery, so careful, but this is to hook up hose, drainage, anything like that. All right,

so this is the current squeeze. Is it gonna go? Oh, because of the door it won’t, but we’re gonna make it squeeze through. We got this. Unhinged our door and it looks like It’s going to barely make it. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Gentle, gentle, gentle, gentle. Okay, and we have

lift off. We did it. This is the Ice Barrel 500 with built-in steps and stairs sitting right next to the OG Ice Barrel. You know, it barely fits through most doors. Our doors are a little smaller, but standard doors it will definitely fit. What is the experience like

using it and how does someone fit inside of the Ice Barrel 500? Now, one of the things that you need to know about the Ice Barrel 500? Well, first is that the lid is very sturdy and strong. I can sit on top of it. They have the Ice

Barrel logo, as well as their mission statement written right here if you look. “Live mindfully, be wildly courageous, lead with the heart, be playfully curious.” And this is a very nice lid, and when it rains and pours, you wanna make sure that your tub is able to support

a lot of water, or the water brushes off. And because this is solid and it’s very thick, water and rain will and snow will pour on it and then it will melt and pour off of it. Next are the steps. So this has built-in steps. So what I

really like about this is the steps aren’t gonna move because the cold plunge is very heavy when it’s filled with water, and I can easily step on it. So how big are the steps? If I put my foot right here, heel kind of comes off. So you can

turn your foot sideways if you have large feet. The top step is a little bit smaller so you can even turn your feet sideways if you need to, but relatively easy to climb up the steps, and then to be able to step inside of the tub itself. I

love that the steps are built in because if you come to the Ice Barrel 400, which is their very first model, the steps are not attached, right? They’re very light, they’re here, and if your floor is not sturdy, they’ll be a bit wobbly. But I can use these

steps. They’re much smaller, they’re about half the size of my foot. The top one’s a little bit bigger, but I can use these to climb up and into the Ice Barrel 300. I don’t love the disattached steps ’cause it’s a bit wobbly and scarier, whereas those ones are

just bigger in terms of the depth, as well as they’re attached to these plunge. So this one has water cooler hookups up here. There’s obviously a blocker if you don’t have the water cooler. You need to empty the water before you can open this. Just keep that in

mind. Make sure it’s on there tight. It can potentially leak if you don’t put this on properly, and then second, there’s another one down here for the water to come out. You can also cover this one too if you’d like, but I like having the spout because then

I can open this. Oh, and then water is gonna start draining from the tub itself. If you can’t pour water in whatever space that you put this in, then keep that in mind you could tie a hose onto this and carry your hose wherever is kind of safe

to drain all of this water. Now if you look here, you can kind of see there’s a bit of water that’s spilling here, and that’s because this piece comes separate and you have to screw it in yourself, and I did not screw it in properly. And one thing

you really wanna make sure is just like when you’re installing things on your toilet or shower head, you want to use this thread seal tape. You really wanna use this stuff because that’s gonna make sure that the steel is strong here and you don’t have water leaking. So

right now there is water leaking. So I need to empty this, unscrew this off, put this seal tape on, and then it should not leak anymore. But it takes, you know, 20 to 30 minutes depending on how far you open the spout to empty out the entire thing.

There will be a little bit of water left because obviously, this is not at the bottom so you do need to lean the tub more to get all the water out. And Ice Carrel is coming out with a water cooler hopefully soon. I want to test it and

plug that into here, and what they do, you’ll be able to empty your water out obviously. And then put one tube here for the water coming out, and then this for water going in, and you can always keep your ice barrel cold with water. So this is kind

of the water at low, and if we go max, that’s full water coming out. So you gotta be ready. Wherever you point this side of the tub, if there’s other things like we have another barrel here, it’s gonna get that thing wet. So be ready to have a

stream of water coming out here. Things you need to know about the inside. Lid, pretty sturdy, right? Pretty easy to take off and put on. You can lean it against the side when you’re using it, and then if you look inside, this is a little bit dirty right

now so we do need to clean it, but you’ll see the insert holes one up here and one way down there. There is a step that makes it easy to sit. When you’re thinking about where to put the tub, you do need to think about a couple things,

right? One is space on this side in terms of walking up to the Ice Barrel 500, being able to get in so you need to make sure you have ample space on this side. And then on the opposite side, you also need ample space to drain the water,

whether that’s directly how are we doing it now, or tie a hose that drains somewhere else. And then two is where do you look when you’re using the tub? So the seat is on this side so when I’m sitting down, we’re facing the beautiful high line, and this

gorgeous building here. So make sure the direction that you want to view is the direction opposite of where the stairs are. So when you climb into it, you can sit down and kinda generally look this way as you’re ice bathing. So if you look at this water, it’s

gross, right? One thing you really gotta make sure is that you keep your water clean. So that means you gotta make sure that you’re cleaning the water. If you have a water filter plugged into your cooling device or you’re emptying out the water every, you know, one month

is probably normal. If you go in this thing dirty, like, right after workout or sweatiness and you’re not rinsing off or showering, it’s gonna get dirty faster. So to keep that in mind, any kind of hair, residue, like, that’s gonna be in here. This is kinda like a

pool and you need to treat it as such. So there is a cleaning and kind of maintenance process to any kind of cold plunge tub that you have. So keep that in mind, we’re draining it now. We’re gonna clean it and I’ll show you how it feels lifting

and moving this thing, as well as refilling it with water. So the Ice Barrel 500 is built for people who are up to seven feet tall and 300 pounds. This is the largest, biggest tub that can fit the biggest humans, which I do really appreciate. And it’s very

sturdy, it’s supporting my body weight. And in terms of dimensions, this is kinda how long it is. I’m about almost six feet tall if you round up, and then depth wise, if you come on the other side, it’s about two arms length deep right here. Something to keep

in mind in terms of the space that it’s going to take up when you put it in your yard, garage, whatever it is. Big part of maintenance is like hosing it down ’cause it’s gonna get dirty on the inside from all the people that go in it. You

might wanna sometimes scrub it as well. If you don’t put any kind of like sanitizers, oxidizers, and cleaning agents, which they do offer online, use code Shervin, you could have like algae buildup and it could get slippery on the bottom. And if you look at it right now,

it’s almost empty, but the water flow has gotten really slow. So in this scenario, I might hose it down and then I’m gonna have to lift it from the stairs side to get more of the water out. Now that it’s almost fully drained to drain it out faster,

when it gets near the end is lifting it up and just kind of holding it here, and now I’ll just get help, get more of the water out quicker. And if you really wanna rinse out the bottom, you need to do this to get all of the water

out so you can see how much water is left because you gotta really lean it, but then the spout can get stuck too sometimes when in an ideal world, I guess the drain would be at the very bottom. So you don’t have to lean the tub over to

get all the water out. And if I do try to rinse this out now, it’s gonna fill up with water so I need to find a way to keep this leaned over and rinse it out at the same time. All right, I figured out a solution. I’m using

the stairs from the other Ice Barrel to lean it over, and then now I can rinse out the inside by myself, and the water will drain for the most part. Now weight-wise, how much does this thing weigh? It weighs about 100 pounds. So I can lift it up.

You know, you might need two people to move this somewhere. Maybe I could lift it up by myself. Oof, like this. Or I can drag it across the floor. But once you fill it with water, it’s going to be about 900 pounds depending on how much water you

put into it. So make sure that your balcony, flooring, whatever, can support all of that weight within this surface area. Now what’s the experience of fitting in it? So I’m about almost six feet tall, but I’m gonna go ahead and start to step up. You don’t wanna do

this when there’s no water in it, ’cause it’ll wobble a little bit. But I’ll go ahead and step forward. I can keep my hands on the railing, which I really like. Step down to the first seat as a step, and then I go all the way down and

I can sit down on the floor, and this is kind of how it feels. So if I press my back up against it, I can rest my arms up here. So they’re not too high for me specifically. If you’re a smaller person, it might be a bit harder

to have your arms resting up here, but I can kind of relax and chill. So for the most part, this fits my body size. I’ll test it with some friends so you can see what they look like. If I put my knees together, you can see how much

space there is around my knees. I still have some space in the front so if you do have longer thighs, know that your knees might come up against the front. I can spread my legs out and kind of relax in here. If I want to head dunk, I

could do it by doing a forward head dunk, or I can turn around and put my feet up here, and then kinda dunk in the back like so. But it’s not the best if you like to lay down or stretch your legs. Ice Barrels are very much meant

and built for kind of being an upright or seated position, but this is their biggest tub. It’s definitely my favorite tub because the ease of getting in and out is really easy, and then the comfortability of actually sitting inside of it is the most comfortable out of the

three. Now it’s the experience of getting outta the tub, it is a bit weird in the sense that when I stand up, the stairs are behind me. So I could turn around and then start to walk forward and up these steps, or I could start to walk backwards

by keeping my hands here, step up and around, up and around, and then come outta the tub. So it just depends on your preference, but that’s how you would climb out of the Ice Barrel 500. Now we’re going to see how long it takes to fill this bad

boy up. What I like to do is take my hose, put it in the very bottom, and turn it on, and now this is a full blast. Here in New York City the water’s really cold, so this tub is gonna be cold just as soon as I turn

it on. It is 4:04 PM, I’ll go ahead and start a timer here and let’s see. I think it’s gonna take about 20 to 30 minutes to fill up the water to a decent amount. So it’s been 16 minutes, it’s 4:21, and we have overfilled it, right? If

you go inside of this tub, your body takes up volume. So keep that in mind depending on if you have the ability to get the outside area wet and like how easily it can dry, you might want to put less water than normal. But about 20 minutes on

full blast on our hose back here. That’s pretty fast. And then there’s also ice blocks that we can put in here to cool it down if you want, which Ice Barrel offers, and that’s an easy way to put ice in here and not have to buy ice. So

let’s go grab those. So Ice Barrel is kind enough to send their ice blocking packages. We have like five or six of these, but what you do is you fill this up with water, and then you put it in your freezer, and then it freezes. You just need

enough space in your freezer to hold this entire thing. So if you have a big chest freezer at home or something, then you can freeze these. You could also use plastic water bottles, but having these, they slide out really easily. So it’s nice as I just kind of

wiggled it and look at that ice block. It’s about to come out. Oh, just like that. Now we have a massive ice block, and it’s gonna make the water even colder. Now a couple factors about the ice barrel. It is all black so when you look at it

from the top down, you can’t really see the floor that well. Whereas some of them are white, and the feel of this is kind of it feels a little plasticky. I forget what the name of this is, but when you’re getting in, oh my, oh my. Why am

I doing this to myself? Ooh! It’s a wave pool. It’s a wave ice pool. In terms of the sturdiness, it’s pretty sturdy, but like the feel, it feels kind of like a plastic tub, but when you get in, man, it’s cold and you forget all about that. And

this is not like a porcelain type cold plunge, but it still feels good. It’s like a very high end trash can in a way. And you could buy one of those, but this is insulated so it’s gonna keep your water colder for much, much longer. Oh, I’m gonna

sit down there. It’s so cold! It’s like really cold outside here in New York too, but this is kinda what it feels like with the water at maximum. But as I get out, you’re gonna see the levels are gonna drop. And then when I wanna climb out, I

don’t like to face this way because there’s nothing to grab onto. So I typically like to step out backwards to get back out of it. And that is the Ice Barrel 500. I’m gonna test it with some friends so you can see that too. So Sarah’s obviously a

smaller human, so we’re gonna see how she fits in the tub. There’s a little bench on the inside that you can sit right here. – Oh really? – Yeah, so you can sit. If you wanna go even lower, sit on this side, and then you can put your

feet on the bench. It should be pretty cold. It’s at about 45. All right, yeah, I would sit on the bench. How’s the temperature? – Cold. – Cold? Good. – Oh my God. – There you go. Okay. – We’re sitting. – Nice. – It’s cold. We’re good. –

If you wanna go lower, you can. – I don’t want to go lower. This is like more comfortable to sit. – Okay. – Yeah. So I like the bench. It’s a comfortable little stay. – This is too easy. – I’m an ice bath pro. – Ice bath pro.

– My feet are really cold. That’s always the worst part. – Yep. – Ooh. It’s much easier to get in and out of, I will say that. – Yeah, you feel more stable. – Yeah, the other one’s like a little bit of gymnastics. – Yeah. – I like

it. Would do again. 10 out of 10 recommend the stay. – And use code Shervin. – Yeah. – All right, who’s next? – Pokemon. – You can just dip in and out. – I don’t want to. You invited me to come sauna. Veljko, if I go in, you’re

going in. – I’m still not going in. Get in there. You got this. – Just go in and out, in and out. It doesn’t have to be very long. – A soldier. – (screams) too cold, too cold. Too cold. Too cold. – You have to Wim Hof. –

All right, is it a hot tub? Too easy. – It’s like Wim Hof, right? Okay, I’m gonna get out. I gotta get out, we’re gonna get out. Oh my gosh, that was so cold. – Whoa! Oh, there’s a giant block. – Yeah, it’s a cold one. Honestly like

it. – Really cool? – Yeah, this is really cool, actually. – Great. – The steps demonstrate. – I’ve heard it’s focus on your breathing. – How is it? – It’s cold. 50, was it? 50 though? 55? – Yeah. – It’s 50. Feels good. Feels real good. It’s comfortable.

It’s big. – Yeah. – Yeah. – How’s the experience of getting out? Is it awkward to turn around and step out? – No, not at all. It’s not bad. I mean, I’m biased though with my long aesthetic legs. – Yeah. – No, I think it’s I mean, I

have nothing to compare it to, but very comfortable, very comfortable. – I’m gonna go in the 500 for the first time. – Are you excited? – I’m so excited. – All right. What do you think of the barrel so far compared to the other barrels you’ve tried? –

It looks very nice. I like that there’s steps. I like that there’s a very large area for me to just jump right on into. Like, I might do a cannonball. (water sloshing) Oh, I like that there’s a seat in here. This is my favorite. – Why? – I

like that there’s like a natural seat in here. There’s plenty of room. Yeah, this is great. I like this one. So much room. – Plenty? – Plenty of room. – Look at that. – Plenty of room. Like you could really partner plunge, triple plunge. – You could partner

plunge in here? No way. – You could probably quadruple plunge. – I don’t think you could fit more than one person in here. Like maybe Colt as a small human could stand right here. – There we go, there you have it. – Since you enjoyed this video, make

sure you go watch my video where I review all the different cold plunges out there. This is the Ice Barrel 500. I’m gonna test out the 400 and the 300 as well. If you are not following me on all the social platforms @Shervinshares on Instagram, Strava, and X,

do that right now. Subscribe and turn on your notifications while you’re at it.