Koolatron Thermoelectric Iceless 12V Cool Box 25 L

This kept my food and drinks very cold. The only problem is that the 12volt plug broke after my 1st time using it. As of this review in waiting for a new one.

As a delivery person working in the summer heat. This keeps lunch cool enough so not to worry about lunch spoiling or going bad. Not a refrigerator but cooler than outside.

This is great for the Pontoon. Easy to carry, works great, keeps everything cold.

We purchased this cooler for a driving trip from Arizona to Anchorage Alaska. It was perfect for keeping our snacks and beverages cool while on the road. Every morning we put a few frozen water bottles in the cooler to give it a head start….then plugged it in while in the car to keep everything plenty cold. While available to purchase from the manufacturer…it would be helpful to include a 110v converter with the initial purchase. A converter would be welcome for overnights in a motel.

UPDATE: It’s still going after 10 years of heavy use. Indispensable for family travel and blackouts. Still highly recommend.

I’m so shocked to see such negative reviews of this product. After six years of heavy use across countless miles, and throughout numerous power outages, our Koolatron is still going strong.

We love it so much that I’m considering a larger model for camping. But, I’m not sure if we’ll need more than this. The capacity on this 26-Quart model is sufficient to carry all the essentials for our family of six, and our food stays fresh for days.

I can barely function without milk for my coffee, and our little ones go through it like crazy. But, even after loading in a full gallon jug, I’m still amazed at how much more this relatively compact model can accommodate. In addition to the requisite milk supply, we usually load it up with fruit, veggies, cheese, yogurt, and condiments, and still have room for extra drinks.

To assure that we get the most out of it, we add our cold food straight from the fridge to the cooler on the AC adapter. Once we’re ready to go, we move it to the car on its native DC connection, then reconnect it at our destination with the adapter again.

While it is not a refrigerator, it is sufficiently powerful to keep food fresh this way for several days. In fact, I can’t remember ever needing to throw out spoiled food due to a lack of cooling power.

We haven’t tested it in extreme heat, but we’ve been more than pleased with its performance at home during power outages, and in hotels where the temperatures are rarely above 73. In these instances, 40 below 73 should be about 33. I don’t think it ever gets quite that cold, but it does chill and preserve the food well enough to produce condensation on the containers, and to keep us eating fresh for days on end.

We love that this system allows us to eat well and save money on family trips, rather than going broke and making ourselves ill eating ‘road food’. It also enables us to conveniently satisfy the whimsical and erratic appetites of our four little ones with healthy food fast and on the cheap. In this way, we feel this cooler has paid for itself many times over.

The pockets are a big help too. This is where we pack items such as salt, pepper, sugar, utensils, small cutting boards, napkins, and more.

This model is constructed with a strong rigid shell inside (so it doesn’t collapse much for storage), but the soft sides yield a little in tight spaces, and make it more comfortable to carry.

The shoulder strap is another great feature too, since it frees up our hands to haul other luggage and gear.

Even the fabric itself has proven to be very durable, despite years of rough handling.

In addition to traveling well (including a drive from Oklahoma to New York with our 1- and 3-year-old daughters in a Jeep Wrangler!), it kept us afloat while we were without power for nine days after Hurricane Sandy. We charged our Stanley J5C09 1000 Peak Amp Jump Starter off of our car, then ran the Koolatron off of it for about 6-8 hours on, and about 2-3 hours off with great success. Despite the lack of power and refrigeration, we had all of our basics and, between the cooler and our gas range, we still ate well nonetheless.

It would have been a major hassle to keep ice stocked daily, when all we needed was a tank of gas and a battery pack to make this little powerhouse hum.

After so many years of reliable service, we are extremely satisfied with our purchase.

This cooler has been a great investment for our family, and I strongly recommend it for travel and emergencies.

We recently upfitted a stripped out new Sprinter van as an oversized two person SUV to carry our extensive sporting equipment. As part of the upfit, we designed a custom console between the seats to perform several functions, including holding a cooler to keep food safe for day trips. We shopped around for different coolers with a small foot print, and built our entire console around this Koolatron. After a full year of use, it does exactly as advertised–keeps the food temperature roughly 30-35 degrees lower than ambient temperature–it is NOT a refrigerator! So if our Sprinter interior is a comfortable 75 with AC as we drive down the road, the Koolatron keeps our food at just under 40 degrees. We know from our Airstream refrigerator that temperatures around 36 degrees will preserve food for relatively long periods of time, so this is a very acceptable temperature for overnight or day trips.

We originally thought we’d be taking the cooler in and out of the vehicle to refill each day, but we’ve found it easier to bag food and leave the cooler in the console. If you are using it more conventionally, like between your seats in a van with no center console, for example, you’ll find it easy to carry in and out. Some reviewers mentioned a noisy fan–we have to lean over to listen to make sure that we turned it on, we find it so quiet. The exhaust output is of course warm–we have a metal mesh screen built into the back of the console for this purpose. This was expected and is completely normal.

Everybody at the upfitter shop was so impressed with the console design around this cooler that two other customers order the same console/cooler when they saw ours, and the shop bought a half a dozen for future upfits. A Very positive experience out about 16 months from purchase.