High End Coolers vs. E-Coolers

Cliff

Cliff

Steelhead
Hello,

I'm in the market for a cooler for a new camper I'm having built. Up until now I've simply used the cheap Coleman types of coolers for camping, but I've grown tired of having to drive to a store every 2-3 days to empty out the melted ice water and associated scum and buy new ice. I've never owned a high-end cooler, like a Yeti or similar brand. Do they do a much better job keeping ice solid? How often would you have to get fresh ice in a hot climate?

Also, I am having an overlander-type camper built that will have at least one, maybe two solar panels on top, along with a generator and inverter. I would be able to run some of these electrical coolers/freezers, which might be nice, like the Dometic brand. Are these worth the hassle and expense, or would a regular Yeti type cooler suffice?

Thanks,
Cliff
 
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The problem with any cooler is how often you open it, a $1000 yeti wont hold ice for shit if your opening it 20 times a day getting a beer. Open it only once to get the days meal and ice will last for a couple weeks.
 
I have a 12v cooler in my van and 200 watts solar. In the summer sun it will keep things frozen indefinitely as long as the sun shines every day. I used it to refreeze two 1/2 gallon milk jugs of water every night up at Baker lake in July. The 100ah never ran down to the point of needing to fire up the generator. Temp on the cooler was set to 24 degrees.
 
Paige said:
The problem with any cooler is how often you open it, a $1000 yeti wont hold ice for shit if your opening it 20 times a day getting a beer. Open it only once to get the days meal and ice will last for a couple weeks.
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This is why I bring a big cooler and a smaller cooler. One to hold all my beer/food for the week, and one to work out of each day so I only open the big one once per day.

For the big one(an RTIC, so cheap Yeti style) i put a bag of ice in it the day before I build it out. Next day do my big shop and go:
1 layer of beers with 2 bottles of ice(not block ice, water frozen in bottles)
1 layer of crushed ice
2 baskets with all my food
1 layer of ice on top

I put a towel and bag on that during the day and my ice will hold for a week in HOT weather easily. I can even refill the beer section after a few days with river cooled cans. Like @Paige said, the less times you open it the better.

Then I run a small 30 can soft cooler that I fill with the days food/drinks each morning.

If I had your rig I'd probably run the big cooler and then a small electric cooler. Only problem with the big cooler is you can't lift it when full. Not an issue on the raft, but if I truck camp it comes out once and stays out.
 
I have a yeti cooler and it is awesome as a boat seat. Very sturdy and non sliding feet. Would buy it again for This purpose.
I don’t find it keeps ice noticeably longer and it is heavy and lacks room for its size.
Have just as good results from igloo Costco models. Even had a bear attack one and did fine. 10mm warning shots may have helped.
I freeze gallon containers for ice and they last long and dont fill the cooler with water. If longer time is needed I put dry ice under a layer of regular ice. This will extend your ice duration.
 
I farted around with ice chest for decades and hated every minute of it. The constant need for ice, the melt water, draining off the water and the heavy weight were all downsides, not to mention the sketchy cooling in hot weather. And expensive models like Yeti do only marginally better than budget models, certainly not enough better to validate the 3x-5x higher cost.

I just returned from a 2 week road trip with Freestone Sue and used an Iceco 52 qt compressor refrigerator running off of a Bluetti 1800w power station and a Bluetti DC-DC charger. The fridge was packed full most of the time and was flawless, quiet enough to sleep next to and always dry inside. A vast improvement over an ice chest which by definition has reduced capacity in order to make room for ice. If you intend to camp for years ahead I would suggest making the investment in a real refrigerator and a quality power unit, you will thank yourself for it going forward. I have been camping for 64 years now and the new compressor fridges are about the biggest improvement made during that time.


In the 4 years or so that I have been using power stations the price has dropped more than 50%, the power for the 50% less cost has just about doubled and the charging time has been reduced by more than 50%. On the recent trip I had the fridge on full time and was charging devices, fans and lights every day. The Bluetti charges so fast that just a few miles of driving with the DC-DC charger tops it off at 100% charge, it never got below 32% on the trip and just idling the truck for 15 minutes or so had it over half charged again. I never had to break out a solar panel on the entire trip. I also used a a 120v electric tea kettle every day, an electric toaster and an air fryer!
 
Cliff said:
Thanks Rob. So, if you're camped for one week in 90 degree weather, how long would you expect this cooler to keep ice from melting away?
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90 degrees. Keep it in the shade and don't open it unless you need something..... 4 days at least.
 
I bought one of the 12v compressor coolers (euhomy on amazon, $235 for a 58Qt) and used it this summer on a trip to Neah and Ft Flagler over 4 days with my Jakery 1000aH power station. Overall I thought it was great, as others mentioned: No fucking around with buying ice, which also means no listening to my wife complain about how we have to buy ice (she hates buying ice for some reason), no emptying water, no water intrusion into food bags, or bags of salmon leaking salmon juice into the water and contaminating everything. Kept my beer cold all trip and the salmon cold on the way home with something like 30% of the power station power left. Having the power station is also a nice bonus for car camping. Easy to charge my phone without running the car, could run the pumps on my air mattress without turning on the car, and doubles as an emergency power source at home.

I did have some annoyances with the cooler. One is that its big for the size, it feels excessively tall which made it a bit awkward in my jeep, also the compressor does rattle a bit on bumpy roads which annoyed me some. I'm also not sure about the capacity vs. a similar footprint ice chest, it felt somewhat small but that might also have been the fact that its tall vs. wide.
 
Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your advice on this topic. Since I retired I am able to spend more time on trips and typically spend a week at a time in the boonies. I'm leaning towards one of these powered fridges, probably with a smaller freezer portion. Most of my trips involve upland bird hunting with my two English setters, often in areas that are fairly remote. If the hunts are successful, I'm usually bringing bird breasts back in ziplocks, and it would be really nice to be able to freeze them for the drive back home. The camper I'm having built in B.C. comes with one 100w solar panel and a Electric generator 512 Wh, and to be honest, I have no idea what I will be able to power this this setup. Maybe I'll need to buy a second solar panel, but I probably won't know until I get it in the field. I actually thought about a Bluetti and was pricing them a few years ago. I might try and pick your brains on this, offensivename & Iveofione.

Thanks,
Cliff
 
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i had an atc pop up camper. i was glad that i had them put 2 100w solar panels on the roof at the factory. it was not that much $.
i also had a lithium 12v batt, and a dometic 75l 12v fridge/freezer. the solar kept the battery topped off, and the fridge did great. i was VERY happy with this. in the shoulder seasons, with less sun, it might not be the best best, but most of the time it was a great combo.
 
I’ve owned a couple 12v 50 qt fridges…they are worth every penny. No ice, so they hold a lot of stuff that you need to keep cold in a relatively small footprint…and once they get to temp (and everything inside as well), they don’t draw a lot of power (ARB & Dometic have turn off feature if the voltage drops to the point of affecting starting the engine).

You will use it far more than just camping…put perishables in it from the grocery store and you don’t have to come straight home…make as many stops as you want
 
I have a Dometic fridge in our camp trailer that runs on shore power, battery (quickly drains it), and propane. For river trips and general car camping, I make my own ice which lasts longer than store-bought. Did a 5-day trip on the Deschutes River last week. The storage compartment under the front passenger seats is lined with closed-cell styrofoam and the large block of ice was only half melted at the end of the trip. I drilled drain holes in the bottom of the storage compartment so that water never collects in the cooler.
 
Ive had mentioned that he has a DC to DC charger. I also have one in my van/camper and it keeps my house battery charged up to the point that I don’t need solar at all. My camper has an older inefficient 12V RV fridge/freezer combo, and an old school forced air RV furnace with a 12V fan. These chargers are very efficient and not very expensive, and it would be a great addition to your camper build.
 
The chargers really are amazing linked to the new fast charging power stations, mine charges at 500w at idle and a short drive fully charges the Bluetti to 100%. I too no longer need the solar which is nice because my 340w of solar is all portable and requires set up.

When buying a new fridge try to find one with the Secop type of compressor in it as they are more precise and accurate. I started with SetPower models with cheap compressors and they were just all over the map in terms of cooling. Sometimes freezing everything, other times barely cooling it at all. It turned out that the acceptable temperature range according to the factory was almost 16 degrees! That is not close enough for my purposes and I finally gave up and bought an Iceco, much better.

And with power stations stick with name brands with a good reputation. The field is changing so fast with new models showing up often and some of the real cheapos lack the engineering refinement that the better makes utilize. When I bought my first unit the cost per watt was right around $1.00 but by now that price has dropped down near $.25 per watt and the units are vastly more sophisticated. I started out with Jackery and it worked just fine although it is the old battery technology. When they came out with a new model that was faster and more powerful it wouldn't run my Iceco fridge on 12v which the old one did.They wanted me to run it through the inverter on my new Jackery which made damned little sense to me since running the inverter is an extra draw. I wanted my money back and returned the new model but they wouldn't refund and instead sent me a replacement which still won't run my refrigerator unless I plug it into the 120v circuit. Eventually I will replace the 1500w Jackery with another Bluetti product that will talk to both my DC-DC charger and my refrigerator as I have room for another 1800 watts of power in the Casa. When buying a power bank go bigger than you think you need rather than just enough to get by, more is better in this case. In the 8' bed of my pickup I have an air fryer, an electric kettle, an electric frying pan, an induction plate, an electric toaster, a 500w space heater and an electric vacuum. On the 12v side I power an electric blanket, a small but effective swamp cooler that has really been useful in hot weather plus a dozen different LED lights, some of which need recharging. Two of those are Luminaid inflatable lamps that I keep charged, one that goes under the hood at night as a flasher and the other under the rear bumper. I have 4 USB powered fans strategically staged around the interior that occasionally need charging and are perfect for distributing heat or cool around the interior. And of course, phone and computer charging. You just can't have too much power....I have 2 units on board with a total of 3,300 watts, both out of sight but easily accessible and had an abundance of power on a recent 2 week road trip.
 
iveofione said:
The chargers really are amazing linked to the new fast charging power stations, mine charges at 500w at idle and a short drive fully charges the Bluetti to 100%. I too no longer need the solar which is nice because my 340w of solar is all portable and requires set up.

When buying a new fridge try to find one with the Secop type of compressor in it as they are more precise and accurate. I started with SetPower models with cheap compressors and they were just all over the map in terms of cooling. Sometimes freezing everything, other times barely cooling it at all. It turned out that the acceptable temperature range according to the factory was almost 16 degrees! That is not close enough for my purposes and I finally gave up and bought an Iceco, much better.

And with power stations stick with name brands with a good reputation. The field is changing so fast with new models showing up often and some of the real cheapos lack the engineering refinement that the better makes utilize. When I bought my first unit the cost per watt was right around $1.00 but by now that price has dropped down near $.25 per watt and the units are vastly more sophisticated. I started out with Jackery and it worked just fine although it is the old battery technology. When they came out with a new model that was faster and more powerful it wouldn't run my Iceco fridge on 12v which the old one did.They wanted me to run it through the inverter on my new Jackery which made damned little sense to me since running the inverter is an extra draw. I wanted my money back and returned the new model but they wouldn't refund and instead sent me a replacement which still won't run my refrigerator unless I plug it into the 120v circuit. Eventually I will replace the 1500w Jackery with another Bluetti product that will talk to both my DC-DC charger and my refrigerator as I have room for another 1800 watts of power in the Casa. When buying a power bank go bigger than you think you need rather than just enough to get by, more is better in this case. In the 8' bed of my pickup I have an air fryer, an electric kettle, an electric frying pan, an induction plate, an electric toaster, a 500w space heater and an electric vacuum. On the 12v side I power an electric blanket, a small but effective swamp cooler that has really been useful in hot weather plus a dozen different LED lights, some of which need recharging. Two of those are Luminaid inflatable lamps that I keep charged, one that goes under the hood at night as a flasher and the other under the rear bumper. I have 4 USB powered fans strategically staged around the interior that occasionally need charging and are perfect for distributing heat or cool around the interior. And of course, phone and computer charging. You just can't have too much power....I have 2 units on board with a total of 3,300 watts, both out of sight but easily accessible and had an abundance of power on a recent 2 week road trip.
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You forgot to mention the electrified tanglefoot wire, motion detector alarms, and claymores deployed around the perimeter of the Casa campsite!
 
krusty said:
You forgot to mention the electrified tanglefoot wire, motion detector alarms, and claymores deployed around the perimeter of the Casa campsite!
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Krusty, about 3 years ago I came home from a camping trip with a pack rat under the hood of my truck. It took about a week of trying everything I could think of to get it out of the engine compartment. Finally I took an air hose with a high pressure jet and blew it into the area where the rat was hiding. The noise and the jet of air immediately flushed the rat which ran into a shed and stood up on top of my wood splitter. A pellet pistol then ended his reign of terror.
Since then I have used LuminAID lights to discourage rodents and so far it has been very effective, no other drastic measures required. So far! LuminAID's come with a USB charging cable and also have a built in solar panel, they are about as easy a deterrent for rodents as I can imagine. Cheap insurance against the prospect of a multi-thousand dollar wiring harness replacement.
 
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