The Ultimate Star Frame Brick Bag Review: The #1 Cooler Bag

If you’ve found this post, the original STAR FRAME BRICK disc golf bag has now been upgraded! For more, check out this post here on the All-new STAR FRAME BRICK 2.0 disc golf bag!

A few months ago, I started thinking about buying a cooler bag for my rounds. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna pull the trigger on a new bag this year, but I kept looking at my “best cooler bags list” here and considering a few on that list.

Now up to this point, I’ve played hundreds of rounds in the heat and in the cold and have tried many ways to carry drinks including: a single small water bottle, 3-4 water bottles taking up disc space, a large reusable water bottle, a huge water jug by itself, a separate cooler with drinks, a couple of cans taking up disc space, a 6-pack with only a couple discs, and other annoying bag combinations.

You’re either sacrificing disc space or sacrificing storage for drinks. I don’t like that.

It was pretty much guaranteed that the next bag I got would be a cooler bag due to my frustration up to here and now. Fast forward a few months and I was able to pick up the Star Frame Brick Cooler Bag, from the awesome team at Star Frame, to play with, test out, and review. I was stoked to have a new cooler bag for my rounds!

So in this post, we’re gonna be thoroughly going over the Star Frame Brick Bag in all its glory. We’ll also look at:

• Why I got this bag
• What Star Frame says about their bag
• All of the features of the bag
• Pros
• Cons
• A couple of places where you can get this bag and…
• My overall opinion of it.

Why I got the Star Frame Brick Bag

Let’s rewind a couple of months. I was getting ready for the warm weather and some spring disc golf. That’s when I got an email from the disc golfers who created a company called Star Frame Bags. They wanted to know if I would test and review their new bag – the Star Frame Brick Cooler Bag. It was like they read my mind and then emailed me. It was exactly what I had been thinking about picking up for weeks.

Of course I told them that I would be happy to test and review it. So I got the Star Frame Brick Cooler Bag for free as part of this review. I’m happy to say that I’ve thoroughly tested the bag out and I’ll be sharing everything good and bad that I’ve found up to this point.

Here’s what Star Frame says about their bag

First, let’s start with the company itself. Star Frame is a family owned and operated company that was launched in 2020 with a purpose: “to design the perfect disc golf products that allow players to focus on what’s important – enjoying the sport and making long-lasting memories.” They also wanted to make sure that their products speak to all skill levels of players, not just the high level competitors or the pros. That’s awesome to me.

So they started out by creating the Star Frame Brick Bag as their main staple product. This exceptionally well-made bag brings together their focus of bringing great products to all players and their goal of always having fun on the course. Just reading all of that already made me love Star Frame.

Here’s what Star Frame says about their bag:

“The Star Frame BRICK is durable, incredibly well insulated, and lightweight. The adjustable sternum straps and breathable soft back padding make it a breeze to carry 16 discs and ice-cold beverages.

The top compartment sports a traditional disc golf bag design that can hold up to 16 discs without the fear of them falling out. The bottom compartment offers a LARGE capacity cooler with enough room to keep 24 cans or bottles ice cold thanks to the PEVA liner insulation.

The strong padded rubber carrying handle and quality-stitched shoulder straps ensure your bag stays strong. The bottom of the bag has been equipped with a durable rubber bottom with four plastic spikes. This one-of-a-kind backpack can withstand any weather conditions you throw at it. at the park, the beach, on a trail walk, or on a road trip.

If you take the game seriously or just looking to have a few cold ones throughout the course, this bag is for you!”

That all sounds pretty good so let’s check out all of the features of the Brick Bag!

Features

So this bag comes flat out of the box and has a set of instructions to quickly set up the bag. Most bags don’t come like this, so before you use it, you have to quickly install the 5 pieces that come inside – 3 hard yet flexible pieces for the two sides and the back. Also, there are 2 foam pieces that fit in the sides for extra insulation. For instructions on how to put the bag together, check out the video from Star Frame below ⬇️.

Link to video on YouTube.

Here are some of the awesome features of the Brick Bag:

1. The Cooler: the absolute staple of this bag. It’s a cooler bag, so there’s a huge need to highlight this feature. The Brick Bag packs a hefty second compartment that can easily fit about 24 cans if you really want to or about 18 small water bottles. If you’re smart about it, you can use half of this compartment for a cooler and half for storage. Or you can use it all for storage if you want. Whether you put discs, drinks, or other stuff in this pocket, there’s a ton of space. You can also access the cooler through the other front zipper pocket. You can see in the picture below where I tried it out with discs in it.

2. Disc Storage: up top, the disc storage space is pretty awesome. It simply holds a lot of discs. Just today, I had 12 putters and 3 mid-range discs in the top to test out how much space it has. It can safely hold between 15-20 discs depending on how you like to arrange your discs. The more drivers you carry, the more discs it will hold. On the other end, the more putters you carry, the less discs it will hold. So all in all, good on the disc storage.

3. water bottle compartment: on the left side of the bag (facing the bag), there’s a pocket for a small water bottle, can, or small glass bottle.

4. Front Storage pocket: on the front of the bag, you’ll find a zipper pocket big enough for a phone and keys. But I put my hockey puck (for getting discs out of trees), some DiscgolfNOW.com business cards, and my keys.

5. side phone storage pocket: this is where I put my phone or anything small and slim. This pocket isn’t big enough for a disc, though.

6. Super comfortable padded straps: man, these straps are comfortable. I can hardly feel the weight of the bag with these straps on. There’s also a buckle that you can fasten if you’d like. On to of that, there’s a grip handle for when you just want to carry the bag a few feet or around the course.

7. bottle opener on the padded strap: I’m not sure how often I’ll use this feature, but I think it’s pretty cool that there’s a bottle opener on one of the straps.

8. Star Frame feature logo on the front: So the guys at Star Frame will be happy with this one. I absolutely love their logo. It’s very simple and it just works. The front of the bag features this logo.

9. The price: the Star Frame Brick Bag retails on the market for $94.95, just under $100. That’s a fantastic deal for this bag considering everything you’re getting AND having a bag unlike any others on the market right now.

Pros

We just saw all the great features of the Star Frame Brick Bag. Now we’ll hit on a few pros and cons of this awesome cooler bag.

Here are some pros of the Brick Bag:

1. The HUGE Cooler compartment: the cooler compartment is massive and big enough for a lot of drinks AND enough storage for all of your miscellaneous bag items. Rounds and drinks for days.

2. The massive amount of storage: I absolutely love how much you can fit in here. The section above only slightly shows how much storage this bag actually has. The cooler, the disc compartment, and all of the pockets give you a lot of storage space.

3. You can rearrange this bag many different ways: this is a huge win for Star Frame. Yes, it’s a cooler bag. But you can choose how you want to arrange this bag. Choose your area for discs. Choose whether it’s going to be a cooler or not for you. Choose to have half cooler – half storage. It’s totally up to you in how you want to arrange it all!

4. Great disc space: you can fit all of your discs perfectly in the top disc storage space. If you wanted to, you could make this a field work bag and pack the bottom full of discs, too. It will hold about 40 total discs in the top and bottom combined.

5. Bottle opener: this pro just makes the bag better, whether I’m going to use it a lot or not.

6. No other bag quite like this one on the market: so, to date, I haven’t found another bag quite like this one on the market. If you go to search “disc golf cooler bag” online, your options are limited. There are a few others, as highlighted in my best disc golf bags with coolers post, but nothing made like the Brick Bag. So good on Star Frame to lead the way in the cooler bag space because a lot of disc golf is played in temperatures where a cooler is a GREAT idea (honestly, it’s always a good idea to have enough hydration and drinks).

7. Really awesome bag for chill rounds: lastly, this bag has been awesome for just throwing some drinks in a bag and hitting the course with my buddies. It’s been fun and makes chill rounds even better.

Cons

Now for the cons. I’ve played with this bag for a few weeks through about 10 rounds and haven’t really found a lot of bad things about the Brick Bag. But there a couple of minor things that I’ve found that could be improved.

Here are some cons of the Brick Bag:

1. You have to set it up out of the bag: this didn’t bother me that much and only took a few minutes…but I still had to set it up. This is really a first world problem kind of thing, so if Star Frame can find a way to just have the bags built with all of this already done, it would be good. But they seem to do this for shipping purposes, and it’s probably cheaper for them to be made this way, so it’s no real issue.

2. The sag of the top of the bag: the biggest issue of the bag that I found was the sag at the top of the bag. What I mean by this is that if your top disc compartment is loaded with discs, and your bottom cooler section isn’t very full, the bag gets top heavy and tends to sag down. This bag is also tough to play with if you have it full of discs on top and nothing in the bottom. So there’s got to be a kind of balancing act with your gear.

What I’d recommend is that you only bag about 12-15 discs up top and make sure to keep at least all your gear in the bottom (if you’re not going to take any drinks). Just keep everything you take for your rounds in that bottom pocket and you’ll be fine.

My recommendation to Star Frame would be to find a way to strengthen the top disc section. Since they already send those hard, flexible panels for the bag set up, why not add in one more for the top section. That could really help with this minor issue and would probably be easy to remedy with the design and next version of their Brick Bag.

3. Water bottle compartment is a bit small: another small issue that could be easily resolved. This water bottle pocket needs to be bigger because it can’t fit much more than a small water bottle. For those who carry the large Nalgene or reusable bottles, you’re out of luck. I guess you could put it in the cooler compartment 🤷‍♂️.

4. Not a quick bag by any means: this is a hefty bag for lengthy rounds and your need to consume a lot of beverages. This isn’t really an issue because at this point I’m just reaching to find cons for whoever is looking to buy this bag. If you’re looking for a quick round bag, you could use this, but it’s not ideal.

My recommendation to Star Frame would be to think about designing a cheaper, quick round cooler bag to compete with some of the other bags currently on the market. As for the Brick Bag, leave it as is.

A couple of places you can get this bag

There are two places online where you can buy the Star Frame Brick Bag. Let’s check those out.

1. Starframebags.com

I highly recommend that you go through the Star Frame website so you can purchase from them and directly support the company. They’re a fairly new business and anything you can do to help them out is appreciated by the #discgolfcommunity and myself here at DiscgolfNOW.com.

If you’d like to grab a Brick Bag from Star Frame, you can get it here on their site.

2. Amazon.com

If you’d rather grab your bag off of Amazon, you can feel free to do so here. You’re still buying from Star Frame, but they get a little bit less money. If you’re just grabbing it on there to save on shipping, we highly recommend spending a couple extra bucks and getting it on the Star Frame website to help them out. Let’s support Star Frame!

Overall

This really spacious cooler bag has everything you need to play in the heat or in the cold. It has a ton of features including a large cooler compartment for drinks and storage, a great amount of space for your discs, comfortable padded straps, and a bottle opener for your brewskies. After a pretty thorough review, it’s pretty safe to say that this is the best cooler bag on the market and will definitely make a great purchase for your rounds.

Note: as I put some wear and tear on this bag, I’ll update the post accordingly. So far, it’s only seen a few rounds.

Lastly, if you’d like to watch a really great, thorough video review of the Star Frame Brick Cooler Bag, check out Doth Savek’s video below ⬇️.