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.
| Manufacturer | F40C4TMP |
|---|---|
| Brand | F40C4TMP |
| Item Weight | 23.9 pounds |
| Product Dimensions | 22.6 x 12.6 x 11.3 inches |
| Item model number | F40C4TMPJSOUN002 |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Manufacturer Part Number | F40C4TMPJSOUN002 |
| Special Features | Portable |
| Voltage | 12 Volts (DC) |
| Capacity | 20 Quarts |
| Number Of Doors | 1 |
