20QT Portable Refrigerator

I bought the F40C4TMP 30 Quart refrigerator for a road trip from Myrtle Beach, SC to Seattle, WA and back. I also bought the matching insulated cover. It sat on a small pedestal I built, on the floor behind the driver seat of our Volkswagen Tiguan. I was careful to be certain it had enough airflow to work efficiently. We set it at 40 degrees, and it held that temperature with amazing consistency. There was plenty of room in it to hold drinks, yogurts, lunchmeat, fruit, etc. A principal reason for getting it was because we didn't want to constantly be fussing with ice or cold packs in a cooler. I also bought the Progeny 300W Portable Power Station (the orange and grey unit next to the fridge in the photos). The power station connected to the 12v outlet at the rear seats, then the refrigerator connected to the power station. I needed to buy a Sparking Cigarette Lighter Male to DC Connecter 5.5x2.1mm cable to connect from the car cigarette lighter outlet to the power station. While the car was running, it powered the fridge and charged the power station. Then, when the car was shut off, the power station automatically continued to power the fridge. When the fridge was running, which wasn't very often because we were conscious about keeping the lid closed as much as possible, it pulled about 34 watts. Typically, the power station still had 60% charge after running the fridge overnight. On one stop, we parked the car for two solid days and the power station drained to an auto shut-off point (The fridge has a protection feature in which it will shut off if the voltage drops beyond a certain level.) However, because the fridge lid was closed - it has a nice magnetic "catch" - and because of the insulated jacket, the internal temp only rose to 47 degrees. All in, the set up cost just shy of $400. It was well worth the money. The system performed flawlessly. It was nice to have perfectly chilled food and beverages, with no hassling with ice, and due to the insulated jacket, no sweating. The fridge, the insulated jacket and the power station are all really good quality. Five Stars!

June 30, 2023 Update. I've had this camping on several 2-5 day trips and several grocery runs. Works great. 2nd power source purchased seperately that I mention below in this review was a must have for non-electric camp site or parking with the cooler in the vehicle on grocery runs. Get at least a 300Watt hour portable power supply to run the cooler on DC when the vehicle isn't supplying power. And pay extra for a fast-charging power supply. The cheaper power supply I mention below that takes 8 hours to recharge is a major pain for primitive camping. I had to keep my hybrid RAV4 running most of the next day to recharge it via the vehicle's DC aux port. It kept stuff cold although the temperature CAN vary about +7 degrees higher than the setting. For context, my low-end, Elecrolux, home kitchen full-sized refrigerator varies this much also. Some high-end home kitchen fridges (Samsung?) vary a little less but still vary. But for this cooler, temperature variablilty is weird, and not consistent. I had thought it was due to the placement of the secondary thermostat I was using. Or the addition of warm items placed into the cooler. But then I discovered THIS unexplainable mystery and have been able to repeat it many times. Let's say I set it at 33. It reaches that 33 temperature and reads that on both thermostats and shuts off the compressor. Without putting any more items in/out of the cooler, keeping the lid closed, not moving it from my house, and with it full of water bottles, the readout temp on the cooler keeps saying 33. But my own, seperately purchased, internal thermometer over the course of the next 2-5 hours after the compressor goes off reads as high as 40. THEN, I disconnect the power to the cooler for a few seconds, plug it back in...and magically the readout on the cooler then matches my internal thermometer and reads 40 and the compressor starts to cool it back down to 33. Drives me nuts, can't figure out why. If I don't reset it, it eventually starts the compressor and cools to about 35 and then stays in the range of 35-40 when the cooler is set at 33. However, occasionally it will cool it down to 33 without resetting/unplugging it. I can achieve the same results of "resetting" it without unplugging it by changing the cooler's temperature in the settings menu. Any change of the temperature or unplugging/re-plugging somehow tells the software to "poll" the thermostat for an up-to-date reading. It's almost as if the software tells it to only poll the temperture of the cooler thermostat at certain intervals of perhaps every hour or so. Or maybe the software allows this temperature varibility to reduce start/stop cycles on the compressor?? All of this as described above was done with the compressor in max cooling mode, not eco. In any event, it's acceptable and not really an issue. The temperature variability is comparable to my lower-end, full-sized, kitchen fridge. So I'm good with it. Still thrilled with the cooler and recommend buying it. May 25 2023 Update. Took this cooler camping last 3 days. Put it on eco on DC power. Left my own thermometer in there. Had it set to 33F. My own thermometer said middle of stuff got to 41F with constant DC power supply. Outside temps 45-75F. Not good. Temp too high for meat. Set it to max hoping for less variability. Left in vehicle i shade. Will report back. History: I used to have a Thermoelectric AC/DC Coleman 40 Qrt cooler for about 15 years. It finally died. I also had a traditional non-electric aproximately 45 Qrt cooler and some smaller traditional coolers needing ice. I used these for camping, road trips, day trips, hotel trips and so on. I really liked the idea of loading up drinks and food to take camping to either electric sites or primitive sites and using my car battery or a $100 Walmart portable power station (that also recently died) at the primitive sites to keep the cooler cold. I would also take the electric cooler up to a hotel room and plug it into 110v outlet all night. The problem is the Thermoelectric cooler only cools 40 degrees colder than the ambient temperature. This means in a hot car or tent at 90 degrees, the contents of the cooler are going to be 50. Not ideal for meats and such. Furthermore, the cooler only worked with the car on. I've owned Toyota hybrids for the last 10 years which cycles the engine on/off when I'm nearby. This worked pretty well in primitive campsites but not ideal. Parking to go on a hike and leaving the car off in the direct sun without the cooler running would drastically increase the interior cooler temperature. I couldn't leave the cooler running because 1) It would drain my car starter battery in a matter of 3-4 hours and 2) my vehicles shut the auxilary cigarrete lighter power off when the car is shut off. Of course, using a traditional cooler with ice works but comes with the problems everyone know such as soggy food, reduced food space taken up by the ice, obscured food because of the ice, the cost of ice, and the inconvenience of running somewhere to pick up the ice. Despite all those challenges, I made it work for years. So when it came time to replace my electric cooler, I wanted to upgrade. I researched on Amazon and discovered electric 12V travel coolers are expensive ($300-1500). I settled on this cheaper-end model. You're basically paying for dependability, longevity, and minimal power draw on the higer end models. For an occassional road warrior like me, I just need something cheaper. And if it dies in 3 years, I'm ok with that. This one comes with a 2 year warranty. I bought this 30 Qrt unit and glad I sprung for this size rather than the 20 Qrt. I paid about $50 more for the extra 10 Qrts but it was on sale for about $250 including taxes. This thing is amazing. I expecially like how you can specify the exact temperature you want. I also like that it shuts off before it drains your battery. I bought a small Hotfish brand 296Wh backup lithium ion portable power station off Amazon for $100 on sale. My thought is I won't have to run my vehicle to keep it cool. I can keep both the cooler and the power station together in the car or tent and it'll keep running. It looks like the power station will run my cooler for probably 2+ days in my house. Of course this run-time would decline significantly in a hot vehicle. I'm still testing but from the looks of it, in my house at 68F degrees, I have the cooler set to 33F. It's full of water bottles. I have a seperate thermometer inside the cooler. It stays within a degree or two of the specified temperature on both my independent thermometer and the readout on the cooler itself. I'm not sure why many reviewers say it's off 5-10 degrees. Or they say the temperature varies 5-10 degrees. Mine is neither. It stays precisely at 1F +/- from the set temperature with the water bottles in it. When it was empty and initially cooled after about 1 hour, it would fluctuate 3-8F (compresser on/off) and was about 2-5 degrees off difference with my own thermometer placed in the bottom middle. What I noticed influenced this was the placement of my own thermometer, whether the contents were hot/cold (obviously), and how long it had been running to equalize the temperature among all the contents including the exterior walls of the cooler. It took all day to cool down 15 room-temperature water bottles but after they were cooled, it stayed very consistent with the temperature--both on the readout on the unit, and my own electronic thermostat. It's unclear where the internal thermometer is placed in the unit but obviously something warm placed near that would mislead any analysis. I assume the thermometer is near the top behind the plastic wall somewhere and away from the cooling coils running around the perimeter. When on eco mode and in my 68F house with water bottles chilled to 33F, it draws about 33-34 watts when running. In max cool, it draws 43-45 watts. These numbers are coming from my power station display. But it only runs for maybe 10-15 minutes every hour. At this rate, my portable power supply barely has a drain and could likely last a couple days. One thing to think about when pairing this up with a portable power supply, you're probably fine with a 250-300 Wh battery. This would last 8-24 hours assuming 60-80F weather and opening/closing the cooler and adding warm cans/soda/beer. If you need it to last longer, spring for a more expensive 300-600Wh but each 100Wh will cost you roughly another $100. At around 250-300Wh, Lithium Ion is cheaper ($100-150) than a LiFePO4 battery type ($200-300/device) and lighter but takes longer to charge (8 hours) and doesn't like the heat (hot car or tent). So, if you're camping for several days on a primitive site with no electric, you'll need to figure out a way to recharge. I plan on using my vehicle's DC aux port or a cheap 120V 300-400W inverter hooked to my car to recharge it. I don't want to run my vehicle for 8 hours to recharge the pack. So I also purchased a $200 (on sale) Ecoflow River 2, 256Wh LiFePO4 portable battery with 1 hour fast charging. Compared with the Hotfish brand 296Wh, this Ecoflow lasts longer (3000 charge cycles vs 500), charges faster (1 hour vs 8 hours), tolerates ambient heat better but is twice the cost ($200 vs $100). So my advice is to either pay to get a higher capacity battery like 400-600Wh per unit and pay about $400-500. Or, just get two cheaper ones like I'm doing for $200-300 combined total for around 250-300Wh per unit. Or be happy with 1. But watch out for the really long 8 hour charging speed of the cheaper units. After 8 hours in my 68F kitchen hooked up on eco to my power supply with pre-chilled 33F 15 water bottles and opening lid a handful of times, the readout on my Hotfish 296Wh power supply still shows 5 out of 5 bars. I am supper impressed with this minimal power draw. I plan on using the slower charging power supply for my CPAP machine which only used up 1/5 of the charge all night. I'll use the faster charging one for day trips to the grocery and camping with the cooler. My plan is to run them in "pass-through" mode where the portable charger is plugged into my DC aux cigarette lighter and the cooler is plugged into the DC port of the portable charger. When the car is running, it'll charge the battery while passing through power to the cooler. When I shut the car off, the cooler will draw from the portable charger. Starting the car again reverts back to charging the battery and passing through to the cooler. This is perfect and exactly what I'm looking for. Say I go to the grocery and buy frozen items, I don't have to rush home. I can even leave it in a hot car for several hours. What's even better is that the cooler settings are retained even with the power off. So the temperature settings on the cooler stays the same when power comes back on. Both devices can be left alone in the rear of my RAV4 Hybrid without messing with it. Initially, I plan to take my separately purchased (for a different use case), remote thermostat which has two devices. I'll place the sensor inside the cooler and the readout up front in the cab on long road trips to monitor the temperature. Or of course I could just periodically look at the display readout on the cooler since I'm convinced it's pretty accurate based on the testing I've done. Lastly, the controls are amazing on this. It displays the set temperature as well as the inside temperature. It has max and eco cooling where as best as I can tell, it just runs longer on eco at a lower watt draw than on max. This is helpful because each time it starts the compressor, it has a higher draw. fewer starts = lower watt draw. I observed it pulling 45 watts initially when kicking in on the compressor in eco mode and winding down to 33 watts over about 20 seconds. On max mode, maybe it would pull 55 watts initially and ramp down to 45? I didn't test this but others alluded to this in their reviews. Also, it's got this battery protection so it won't ruin your car starter battery and leave you needed a jump. I won't use this cause my newer vehicle shuts off the aux power when the car is off. But it will be handy so that it doesn't deplete the battery on my portable power station. Deep draw down's on any battery are not good although Lithium batteries in the power station can handle this much better than lead acid car batteries. And I think the portable power station would shut off power before it was completedly drained to the point of hurting it. So lots of battery protection all the way around. Also, I've read this shouldn't be left out in the rain or hosed off. The electronic display and the compressor electronics probably wouldn't like the water. The sidewalls are 1.5" thick. It's not as thick as Yeti's. For reference, a 35Qrt Yeti on Amazon is running $275. Why get that when for a little less money, you could get this electric cooler. Another consideration, the handles are indented. And like others have mentioned, they're not that deep. It's not an issue for me but if you have weak hands it may be. And forget about two people each trying to carry one side. There is also no wheels or handle. You'll pay more for that. If that's real important, consider getting a collapsible wagon instead. Cause most of the units I saw have very small wheels and all that adds weight, $ and heft you may not want when packed into your vehicle. Summary: Buy this one on sale and enjoy.

Well I read all the reviews before I purchased one... mine arrived quickly, I followed the start up directions and connected it to my Jackery 500 battery and 80 watt solar panel. The cooler is amazingly quiet, I set the temp for 18° and after awhile the temp inside hovered around 20°-24°...so yes the thermostat is a little off but jeez you can just set it about 5° lower than what you want. It will freeze water but takes all day, however I’m using it too it keep steaks and hamburger and eggs and cheese, chicken and milk and bacon ice cold without worrying about water logging. This cooler is fabulous for keeping these things cold. Inside temp was set at 34 and the Jackery never got down past 60% battery life and that’s with an electric blanket running all night on low as well. During the day my Jackery battery charged up to 100% before afternoon arrived. I kept the solar panel attached all the time, the cooler chest only stays on for about 15 minutes every 45 minutes on Max cool. Even on cloudy days it charged up to 100% and I never felt nervous about running out of battery power...I could always plug it into the boat and not worry about low voltage drain because there are three settings on the ice chest to prevent battery damage due to low voltage. The meat and chicken were ice cold, I put the chicken in frozen and after two days it was still a little bit frozen to the point I had to let it thaw a while before we cooked it. I was able to put a dozen eggs, four chicken breasts, 4 t-bones, Two packages of bacon and two sticks of butter and two small cartons of milk and three packages of cheese and 2 pounds of hamburger with a little bit of room to spare but not much.This thing is extremely quiet and very efficient and really does keep things very cold, I bought the insulated jacket to go around it as well. It’s not a huge ice chest it’s only 20 quarts but I don’t have to worry about buying ice and having everything get water longed, it’s a wonderful ice chest and you will not be disappointed. I was not paid for this renew or reimbursed in anyway.

This fridge is still going strong after 2 years hooked up in the back seat of my Honda Accord which i took in 2023 on a 18000 mile trip to the Arctic Ocean and North America. This model is the same manufacturer that BougeRV uses except cheaper. Actually many companies use this model they just put their own logo on it so why pay more? I didn't and happy with mine. This fridge also has a self destruct prevention feature. When temperature in my car got too hot the fridge shut itself down so the compressor does not blow up. I have it directly connected to a 100AH Lithium Iron Phosphate battery that is charged by a 200W solar panel on my roof rack. During cooling cycle the unit uses 54W but of course this can vary depending on set temperature and ambient temperature. It is only one zone so everything in the fridge is the same temperature. I did test it as a freezer and fridge and works fine to keep things frozen. Currently my unit is set for 44F to keep my drinks cold.

I got this, planning to use it while camping, in conjunction with a solar panel and a 160Wh battery. Since I'm going to be relying on it off the grid, I have been doing a bunch of testing to make sure that it will serve my needs. I have been testing it as a freezer only -- its performance as a refrigerator will certainly be different (and better!) First, a little nitpicky thing: the rubber seal over the USB port is completely inadequate. It doesn't seal (or even completely seat) at all. Because I don't want to risk debris or liquids getting into the port, I've just taped over the entire thing (I don't need to use it). This can easily keep things frozen -- but it's not great at freezing things that aren't! When trying to freeze a large freezer pack, it managed to get the pack down to about 3C without trouble, but below that, it starts to take a very, very long time (days). It is best used as a long-term sort of freezer: if you take something out of it and it warms up too much, you're much better off not putting it back in. I am able to get it down to -21C. The temperature readout indicates a lower temperature than it actually reaches, by about 5C. I haven't yet tested how long it can keep temperature when it's not being powered, but it seems like it will reasonably well -- I think it's a little worse than a good cooler on this count. I think that if you get the thermal cover to go with it, it will probably outperform a good cooler. That's just my expectation. I haven't tested it. I tested how long I can run it on the battery I'm using, with it set to -21C and to -10C (using a 160Wh battery, discharging it down to 10%), and with nothing at all in the cold chamber. At -21C, I can run it for about 6.5 hours. At -10C, I can run it for about 10.5 hours. These numbers don't change between "eco" and "max" modes. "Eco" mode does make the fridge use about half as much power as "max", but the compressor runs for about twice as long. If you're using this in a setup where you can't draw more than 30W or so, "eco" is your friend. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to matter much. Testing with it full of food is a completely different matter. My whole life, I've been told that any fridge/freezer is more energy efficient when its full, but I didn't realize how much of a difference this makes. When full of already frozen food, it can maintain that temperature for about twice as long on a charge. I really like this refrigerator a lot, and I think it will meet my needs easily. I can recommend it without hesitation, but think that expectations need to be adjusted: this is not like your home freezer, and performs poorly if you're freezing something that wasn't already frozen. However, as long as you can pre-chill the things you put into it, this performs excellently.

Good freezer and storage cooler- quiet - shows inside temperature. Not too expensive. Comes with AC and DC power cords. We ran this freezer on regular electricity in our cabins in the national parks, where there are no refrigerators. We made plenty of frozen bottles of ice to switch out into our regular coolers, so we did not have to deal with buying bags of dripping ice every day. It freezes anything well. We are very happy with the functionality. It also acts like a refrigerator, just set the temperature you want. We also ran it well on our high quality Yeti back-up battery/power station. This freezer cooler does not have it's own battery, which we really liked (for weight and durability). We can plug it in to the wall or use one of our portable Yeti power station batteries.

I am over all very satisfied with this cooler. Its compressor is small of course so it doesn't cool super fast, but it is reasonably quick for its size, which also makes it very portable. The digital thermometer/thermostat is quite accurate and can even be set to cool below freezing so be careful unless you don't mind your drinks being frozen. It cannot be set quite cold enough for ice cream, though, which requires temperatures a ways below freezing to stay solid, so be aware. (Some ice cream does okay at its lowest -8F setting, but not all.) But it works excellently to keep food and beverages nice and cold. Its 20-quart capacity is on the smaller end which again makes it nice and portable, but still easily holds 2x 2-liter soda bottles with a bit of room to spare, and there are larger models for those who need more storage space. The compressor is actually much more quiet than I expected, though of course it still makes a bit of noise it is hardly noticeable. Overall an excellent product and highly recommended.

I’ve had this well over a year now I think, and it works great. We use it a lot for camping in the summer and it cools our drinks down as cold as you want them. I usually set it to 38 degrees and it has no problem maintaining that.