I will preface this review with this caveat: Auto coolers are not refrigerators. They will keep cold things cold, with help.
My husband drives a truck for 12-16 hours per day. He never stops, so I pack his lunch every day. He carries water, energy drinks, veggies, sandwiches, sometimes pizza, etc. He used a Rubbermaid cooler for a long time, but it was too small. He needed a larger cooler that would fit between the seats of the truck and have more space.
This cooler is HUGE. They make two smaller ones, but since I like to load it up with big ice packs, it's a good size. It'll never actually be full unless we take a trip with it, though. 2 liter bottles stand up in it and I'm guessing that six of them would fit. I load it up with 2 1.5 liter water bottles, a couple of 16 oz lowcarb Monster drinks, plus a sandwich, cherry tomatoes fruit and other snacks and the cooler is still about half full even with the two large blue ice bags.
The Koolatron does the job nicely. It will not cool warm things down well and if left on its own, cold things will start to warm up after 8-10 hours, so I put 2 large blue ice bags in the cooler every morning and they come back at night still partially frozen. Any leftover drinks are still cold.
I also purchased the power inverter so that I could plug in the cooler first thing when I get up. I then load the cooler and the ice bags right before he leaves. That helps considerably.
Is the cooler keeping things at 40*? Doubtful, but it's keeping them cold enough that drinks are refreshing and his food does't spoil. He keeps the AC on in the truck all the time, so the cooler doesn't have to work too hard.
A soft sided cooler like this isn't as effective as a hardsided cooler, so there's a bit of a tradeoff, but it's the largest one I could find that would fit where it needed to go (between the seats of a Peterbilt Daycab after removing the drink holders) and it's lightweight. The shoulder strap makes it easy to carry. By the time I load it down with a couple liters of water, drinks, ice and use the bungee on top for his paperwork, it weighs about 30 pounds or so. A hard cooler would be impossible.
The outside pockets are handy, you can even put ice in the drink holder (which will only hold a cup the diameter of a soda can). There's a mesh pocket in the back that's also very handy.
Overall, we're very pleased with this cooler, but unlike the another reviewer, our expectations were more realistic.
Great cooler, just remember to chill your products, and a blue chill block (couple of bucks at wally world etc) helps also. Put a weeks worth of sandwich fixin's in and the stuff was still cold a week later. Easy to transport, and just the right size for one person.
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I got this cooler in Late Jan 2011. I took it on a cross country trip even through West Tx, NM and AZ. This cooler kept our items cool and we made sandwiches along the way. I just got back from a trip where I did not have a refrigerator in the hotel room. I took mine in with cream for coffee, cheese and beefstick for late night sandwiches. I plugged it in (with the optional powerpack) and everything was still cold. I added a room temperature soda can on day two and by the time I got home the soda can was cold. I also had cold packs in this refrigerator and they were cold enough to ease sore muscles.
I also put all my items in this cooler cold and add an ice pack.
Update,
I just got back from a trip where I was driving all day. I packed my cold items in the cooler and put a pillow of ice on top. The ice pillows I refreeze each night when I am in a hotel that has a freezer. Most days I was driving 10-12 hours. I place the cooler in the back of my SUV and plug it in. I place light colored fabric on top to reduce the solar effect. Most of the driving days were 95-100 degrees. My food arrived cold and some of it was still frozen as I brought frozen food with me to eat at night and the ice pillows were still partially frozen. I will be going to Fl in a couple weeks and will be taking my cooler with me. It is doing a great job for me.
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We got this cooler due to its larger size, soft-sidedness, and cooling capability. We have two young kids and we do several family road trips, so we thought it would be a good fit for long journeys, especially keeping juice, milk, string cheese, etc. cool enough throughout the day. While technically the cooler worked, it could have been a lot better, and it really isn't worth the hassles or price for what it delivers.
Having read other reviews, here's what I agree with:
There's a difference between refrigeration and "cooling"
The cooler is quite large
Using this cooler did indeed keep items a bit colder than if we hadn't used the cooling function
However, these agreements don't cover the negatives.
While the item fits on the floor in front of the rear seat in our SUV, the fan is awfully noisy, and pushes out a bit of heat.
The durability and construction is questionable, as a few of the zipper pulls broke on its maiden voyage. We ended up using bent paper clips for the rest of the trip.
the side pockets don't offer enough elasticity to allow much more than paper, cards, or possibly a rigid string cheese stick
when testing prior to departure, the cooler struggled to keep the internal temperature below 66 degrees, even though items came from the fridge, and the house thermostat was set at 76.
After two days, the warm exhaust and droning noise in-vehicle were too much, so we unplugged it and used it as a soft-sided conventional cooler for the remainder of our trips. The cooling unit took up interior space, and the odd exterior pockets weren't useful, and the aforementioned zipper issue made using it less satisfactory than if we had picked up a different cooler for half the price (not even including the adapter).
Bottom line: we're hoping to get $15 at our next garage sale for it (including adapter). A bit of a waste.
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I purchased this cooler along with it's electric adapter. I love it. I've used it in work to keep my lunch cold (the adapter allows you to plug it into an outlet) and it's just like putting my lunch in a refrigerator. You can also plug it into you car's cigarette lighter (which we did on a trip) and that works great also.
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I decided to put together a system with two 100-Watt solar panels, a couple of deep cycle batteries and a good quality solar charge controller, instead of the simple on/off type. I'm an electronics engineer and I used to design battery chargers for sealed lead acid batteries. I know how important it is for longevity and charge density to properly charge and maintain the batteries. Even in the best of all possible worlds any sealed lead acid battery is going to be down to about 60% capacity after 5 years, so these devices that maintain the batteries are important.
