Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We've had the ARB for about a month and it works as expected. (My lovely girlfriend bought it so I don't show up as a verified buyer). We bought it for use in our camper/adventure van for camping/surf/mountain bike trips. We plug it into our Goal Zero Yeti1250, which has its own permanently mounted 150watt solar panel for charging. We rarely stay in developed campgrounds and do mostly off grid trips. The ARB works great and cools as expected for a $$$ 12V cooler. We just got back from a 2 week road trip with the ARB as our only cooler. I did order the canvas travel bag for the ARB, and think it was a good investment, more on that later. A couple notes in no particular order. - The ARB requires 80-90 watts for startup power then the power consumption settles into the 55 watt range. (The goal zero has a power consumption display). - After about 8-9 days of camping (without consistent sunlight for the solar panel), the ARB ran down the Goal Zero Yeti's voltage to where it didn't have enough voltage to start the compressor. We were also using the Goal Zero to run our roof vent, charge cell phones, iPads, run LED lighting, etc. We could hear the compressor trying to kick on, but it didn't have quite enough voltage. Just be aware that the startup requires decent voltage in the battery. This is important for RVs and campervans with a house battery. Plugging in overnight at a campground fixed the issue. Just be aware of battery usage for long trips. Definitely would be possible to run down your car battery with the ARB if you were parked for a few days in a backcountry camp spot. -the ARB is not insulated like a Yeti or Coleman Extreme, or one of the other high end coolers out there. You can feel cold bleed through the metal parts of the cooler. I bought the canvas travel bag and cut double thick reflectix (foil lined insulation) to go inside the canvas travel bag. You can barely tell it is there and it made a big difference in my ability to feel cold bleed through the cooler. See the attached pics to get an idea of how I added extra insulation to the ARB travel bag. Note that the travel bag does have foil facing, but it is pretty thin. I used a sharpie, straight edge, razor, and shears to mark and cut out double width foil insulation to add to the inside of the travel bag. Took about 20 minutes. Pic of the ARB strapped into our camper van (2007 Ford E350 custom conversion) have the extra insulation installed, you can barely tell it's there. Overall we are happy with the ARB. Not carrying ice is really nice. We plug the ARB into the campervan 12V outlet when driving, then switch back to the Goal Zero Yeti when parked. For longer trips (we are doing a month long road trip next summer through western Colorado), I plan on chaining in a second 100ah battery to the Goal Zero, primarily for running the ARB for long term off grid use.