Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was looking for a portable refrigerator for camping, and was frustrated at the lack of some of the info that was available on this cooler (K25), so this will be a long, in depth review. I hope it's informative for you. Like I mentioned, I was looking for a portable refigerator for camping, for a number of reasons: 1) I recently acquired a solar generator/battery for other personal use, 2) I am tired of having wet/soggy food when camping with ice melting, 3) I hate having to continually source ice, and 4) I lose a lot of space in the cooler due to needing to leave space for ice. My camping consists off-grid car-based camping for less than 5 days with 2 people, so I don't need a large fridge for that. I entertained the potential of getting one of the units that has two large seperate sections for fridge and freezer, but again, foor the length of stays that I am, I don't really need a freezer and a fridge, as anything that would have been frozen needs to be defrosted by the time we'd need to leave anyway. So for this point in my life, this fridge/freezer fits the bill nicely for me. I ran some tests to see just how closely this fridge performs in comparison to the manufacturer's claims. All tests were performed in max mode (what the default is), and on high battery protection, whatever that means. - Test 1: Initial cool down to 32F. The ambient temperature was 68F in my apartment, as well as in the fridge. Running on 12VDC, it took approximately 20 minutes to cool it down to 32, with nothing inside the fridge. The factory claims 15 minutes, so I'll call that close enough. - Test 2: Bring water down to fridge temperature (36F). Following Test 1, I put about 3.5 gal of room temperature liquid in the fridge, and timed how long it took for the fridge to deal with that. This consisted of 15x 16.9oz water bottles, 7x 20oz Vitamin Waters, and a 42oz bottle of cider. This is a rough, worst case scenario, as you should always pre-chill stuff, especially water. Water has one of the highest specific heats, which means it takes a lot of energy to change its temperature. By putting the warm water in there, it took 5 hours to cool the air inside down to 36F. This seems reasonable. - Test 3: Steady state observations. After doing those tests, I continued to take some data to see what the power draw was once the fridge annd the contents were down to temperature. These numbers only apply to this particular use case, of approximately 3.4 gal of liquid, set to 36F. The compressor shuts off at 36F, and the temperature would continue to fall down to 30F (3:30). Then it would take 10 min to warm back up to 36F. It took another 8:30 to warm up to 40F, at which point in time the compressor would kick on. It would take 11:30 min to cool back doown to 36F. So, the cycle would take about 33:30 minuts, and the compressor would be on for about 11:30 minutes of that cycle. While running on 12VDC, the fridge would draw approximately 45 watts while running. That means that once if gets down to temperature, the fridge would consume 8.5 Wh. I also checked the cycle when running on AC. The fridge actually took longer to cool down (13 minutes), despite drawing significantly more power (95 watts) and actually operating at a higher voltage (14.5V DC). This means the fridge is consuming 20.6 Wh of electricity. This should drive home just how efficient these DC fridges are when running on DC power. - Test 4: Temperature retention. Following that, I wondered how long that fully loaded cooler would retain the temperature, even though I knew the water would help it retain a lot of that. After 5 hours, the thermometer I had put inside still read 38F, and the sensor on the fridge was reading 42F. At 7 hours, when I stopped the test, the thermometer I put inside read 42F and the cooler sensor was reading 45F. That's more than sufficient for my use case. I wouldn't be using this as a straight up cooler for that long. - Test 5: Freeze test and temp retention when empty. Some reviews said that this cooler wasn't capable of freezing water solid, so I wanted to check that. I completely defrosted the fridge, and emptied all of the water that I had put in there, and put one fridge cold water bottle in there, and set the temp to -4F, which is the lowest setting. It took just over an hour to get down to -4F on the sensor, but the air temperature inside was only reading around 15F. I have reached out to the manufacturer to find where exactly the sensor is, as that's a pretty big discrepency. After 3 hours, the 16.9 oz water bottle had the makings of ice in it, but was not solid yet. The air temp in the fridge was around 10F. I left it overnight (approx 10 hours), and when I checked, the water bottls was frozen solid, and the internal air temperature of the freezer was 4F. The noted temperature swings were the freezer got down to -4F, warmed up to 0, the compressor turned on, and the temp got up to 7F before cooling back down. I did not record how long it took the compressor to bring that back down, mainly because I will not be using this as a freezer. I then shut off the freezer to see how long the empty freezer holds the cool in. After 2 hours, the inside air temp was 32F and the fridge internal sensor read 41F. Other items of note: - The dimensions given by the manufacturer are wrong. The larger compartmment is 9.9 inches tall x 13.1 inches wide x 10.2 inches deep. The smaller compartment is 5 inches tall x 2.6 inches wide x 10.2 inches deep. This gives a total of 1461.9 cu in, or 23.96 liters. So this is actually 24 liters if you measure it, not the 25 liters that the manufacturer claims. And even if you use the numbers from the manufacturer, it is only 24.46 liters. Just saying. - The app works. I know there are some people saying the app doesn't work with this fridge. Scan the QR code in the instructions, which brings you to their website, and then you click on your phone's operating system, which brings you to your respective app store to download the Alpicool app. - You cannot adjust the hysteresis (temperature setting which the compressor will turn on). It's located under the advanced settings, and you can scroll through it, but you cannot select. Default is 4F. I have contacted the manufacturer regarding this. It would be awesome if the temperature swings were half as big as they are. - The smaller compartment is always about 20 degrees warmer. It realistically only fits 2 water bottles. So for example, if you have this in fridge mode at 36F, that compartment will be about 50F. Alpicool claims it's good for cosmetics and the like. It's a slightly chilly cubby. I think I would trade it for actual fridge space. - The seals seem to be pretty decent. There was no significant amount of cold air flow around the unit. - It's pretty quiet. When it's running, you hear slight gurgling, and the compressor humming, but it's not too loud. Noticeable, but not obtrusive. - It's lightweight. For there being a compressor in there, it doesn't add piles of extra weight. - The handles seem kind of flimsy. It's a good thing they didn't put weaker handles on this. I could see them snapping if you stacked a whole bunch of stuff on the fridge and carried it by the handles. - The internal light is a nice addition, but it's not super bright. I would request a longer light array that goes the entire length of the internal opening. - Not sure what exactly the battery capacity is denoting on the display, since there is no battery within the unit. The battery that I had it hooked up to was actually down to 60%, but the display on the fridge read 85%. - The manufacturer claims that you can have this running in a car, up to 30 degrees. That will be awesome for me, as I could pre-chill it at home, load all the food into it, bring it to the car, plug it in, and travel to to my campsite with everything at temperature. - The lid seems decently tough. I didn't stand on it, but I used it as a footrest and put drinks and stuff on it, and no issues with it. - I've included a whole slew of pictures for scale and actual usage. - The warranty is 1 year. I got that after contacting the manufacturer. Overall, for my particular use case (2 people car camping for 5 days at a time), this is a decent cooler at the price. I'm actually quite happy so far. I am heading out camping next week, and will update if any of my thoughts on it change. I will also update with location of the fridge internal sensor and if you can change the hysteresis if the manufacturer supplies that info. I will also update this if I encounter any issues. **Update: 10/19/2020. I went on a weekend camping trip here in the Northeastern US. It held everything that I needed for 3 nights with 2 people. I could see if your camping habits require more adult beverage use, or if it were warmer outside, you might want to have a larger fridge. I didn't have any issues with running the fridge while driving to the camping location, which was 2 hours away. -I did experience the issue where the DC power plug worked its way out of my 12 power socket, both on my car, as well as on my backup battery. This design flaw should be fixed, as I don't have any other 12 plugs that work their way out of the socket. I will have to rig something up to keep pressure on the plug. I didn't have any issue with the fridge maintaining temperature on our trip. - The handles that I previously expressed concern about are nothing to be concerned about. I had the fridge completely full (approx 20lbs) and 50lbs on top of it, and the handles didn't flex at all. I retract my concerns. - The lights on the display are pretty bright at night, and you can't turn them off, so just put a towel or a shirt over them to hide them. - The internal light is still nice, but would be nicer if it ran the entire length of one of the sides. - I also got feedback from the manufacturer regarding my two questions of if the hysteresis can be adjusted and where the sensor actually is located. The answer to the hysteresis can be adjusted was no, and the sensor is located in the wall of the fridge. So, you're stuck with the "sensor" varying +/- 4 degrees F. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to actually transfer into a swing of =/- 4F on the inside of the fridge, so I think that's acceptable. - I maintain that it's a bit of a shame that the fridge looses a decent amount of space to that uncontrolled cooled portion on the right hand side. I think it would be better served if it were open to the main, temperature controlled section. - I will still be keeping this fridge, as I appreciate the rest of the features enough that the shortcomings (weird uncontrolled "cool" section, unadjustable "advanced" settings, dim internal light) won't keep me from returning it. If this review was useful to you, please mark as helpful. It lets me know that people actually want to know this type of in depth info.