The Gear Team has tested a wide variety of automotive products, parts, accessories, and gear, such as GPS trackers for cars, OBD2 scanners, and electric car chargers. In balance, the Coleman Powerchill offers a good value for your money, with decent performance and relatively large igloo cooler with wheels capacity. The only real things to worry about are its higher power draw and louder fan. You can open up this cooler from the right or the left when in upright mode. If you’ve got a very compact space, like in a tiny house, this offers a lot of flexibility in where you put it.
With a simple flip of the cord, you can convert his cooler into a heater with a maximum internal temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit. It is powered by the same 12V plugin that we are used to seeing but there are apparently some conversion kits out there to allow it to be plugged into other power sources. With our spacious 40-Quart Iceless thermoelectric cooler, you’ll get chilled food and drinks without needing to add any ice. This convenient cooler is like a portable refrigerator, perfect for camping trips, vacations, dorm rooms, truck cabs, offices, you name it. If you’re looking for something simple that’ll keep a couple drinks and maybe a couple of sandwiches cool for your next road trip—look no further than this soft-sided cooler by Koolatron. The electric cooler is super lightweight and easy to transport—but it works just as well at keeping your items cold for extended periods of time.
Koolatron makes a lot of different coolers, but this model hits the sweet spot for price and size. The cooling performance was also the best we saw among all the coolers we tested. If you are going to be on the road or away from a traditional refrigerator for a long time, it’s definitely helpful to have a compressor-type cooler. The electric versions are designed for on-off use to regulate temperature, but they can wear out over extended use. A compressor-style cooler is designed for sustained operation and will be better suited for the long haul.
Plus, you can always keep this product plugged in without needing to stop for purchasing ice. We were very happy with this factor as it saved us time while on the trip. In case there are a lot of snacks inside, the handle is long enough for 2 people to hold it at one time. Look for a cooler made from high-quality materials and built to withstand the wear and tear of regular use, especially in mobile environments like trucks. Electric heaters generate warmth using various technologies such as radiant, convection, and fan-forced heating.
They can get as cold as 35 degrees Fahrenheit and as hot as 140 degrees Fahrenheit. However, a lot of this range will depend on the ambient temperature you are working with. Typically, you can expect maximum temperatures of 135 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. It is important to remember, however, that there is no thermostat on these and you simply plug them in and they run. As you might expect, there are plenty of brands in the thermoelectric cooler game.
The coolers were running off of household electrical power for this test, which required the use of adapters not included with most coolers. The Igloo is the only cooler that we tested which fits comfortably between the front seats of our tester’s minivan, but that’s not enough to make it a good buy. After thorough testing, we’d check out the small coolers from Wagan before we’d settle on the Igloo for this role. Compared to the size of the Koolatron – P27, the Wagan is just less than double the length. The lid opens in two sections, and you also get a set of wheels and an expanding handle to help cart all your drinks around. In stock expedited shipments will ship the same day, or the next business day for orders placed on a weekend, if the order is placed before 12 PM Central Time.
Using the Govee Home Thermometer System, we ran our first test on cooling and efficiency. Assigning each cooler a thermometer, we started each at 71 degrees and turned each to its lowest setting, measuring the time it took to get there. The Govee app provides exportable data, demonstrating both the cooling and insulation properties of each unit, allowing us to build this handy graph. A fantastic option for a road-trip freezer, it performed well in our vehicle space test; it’ll fit just about anywhere. If you need to keep frozen items from melting in a compact space, this is the portable cooler to get. Thermoelectric coolers rely on a chemical process known as the Peltier Effect.
Some of them can be set to nearly freezing temperatures, allowing you to pack items that you may not have taken otherwise. When a current is passed through the numerous connections it allows heat to be directly transferred from one plate to the other. Some thermoelectric coolers also have a fan that helps cool off the exterior igloo ice chest heat sink. Another big difference between an electric fridge and a thermoelectric cooler will be the built-in thermostat. Other extra features that make this cooler stand out are removable dividers and a drain plug. The drain probably hurts insulation a bit, but it’s very nice for easy clean-out after a longer trip.