Compressor fridge, freezer keeping your food cold. My investigation.

Okey, I thought I should write a post about keeping food cold (on the road).

Let me tell you something pandero (from a movie), I own an electric fridge from Waeco. However it has not a compressor, but instead uses a peltier element “doing the cooling”. This box works, but is COMSUMES to much power!! Way to much. I have used it on one summer trip for two days, that’s it! The rest of the time It has been left at home! Useless piece of #@£! (piip)

The little thing consumes about 3 ampere (of course 12 volt direct current). This empties my car battery really fast. I can run the fridge say 5-7 hour and the car will (at best) perhaps manage to start (Yes only one battery, the starter battery). If I run the fridge longer the car won’t start. So every 5-6 hour I have to start the engine on the car and run it about an hour to recharge it somewhat. Really annoying!

Well, as you can imagine, this situation does not work for me! So what to do? I find no other solution but to replace the fridge with a model that consumes a lot less current.  The only choices for me are compressor models (I won’t go into why I have come to this conclusion).

Ok, I know we are trying to keep thing simply right (minimalism and so on…). So is it really necessary to have a fridge?

-          No, I have managed fine without any fridge on my small road trips that I have done.

BUT I do miss it sometime.. I do like milk to my coffee, sure, you can buy McDonalds’ coffee (but the taste wary a lot, last time I had coffee in McD it tasted awful), and McDonalds can’t be found everywhere (waking up with a nice scenery in front of the ocean).

And I also like butter and a good sandwich. Cold water is also nice, a cold beer,  yoghurt for breakfast and  the banana will last longer and so on.  Yap.. Cold food has a place in my heart.

So let us just say that keeping food cold is a luxury, and you have to decide if it is worth it to you.

So what’s the most current consumption friendly fridge/freeze I could find? Well.. Isotherm stands out.

At about 0,7 ampere it will last about 3-4 times longer than my presently Waeco (peltier). Quite a big difference, don’t ya think?

Here are some pictures in Swedish (but I guess you smart people can figure it out). An Isotherm model with a Danish Danfoss compressor seems to be what I am after..  BOOM.



Waeco Coolfreeze, to much current.. not for me.



Isotherm TB32 only 0,7 A on average. NOT BAD. Test Winner.



Isotherm current consumption, dimension and the well known Danfoss BD35F compressor