Coleman 40qt Thermoelectric Cooler & Warmer, Keeps Contents Up to 40F Cooler or 140F Hotter, No Ice Required, Plugs into Vehicles & Trucks

Engineer here - These thermoelectric coolers work perfectly, AS LONG AS YOU KNOW A FEW IMPORTANT THINGS. Save yourself alot of money (and weight) and buy these over a compressor based unit if you're willing to follow some best practices. First - Prechill your cooler, and any food or drinks you may place in here for a few hours. Thermoelectrics are not great at removing heat quickly compared to compressor units, if you place a bunch of warm objects in here, you won't get the cooling you think you should. In order to pre-chill the unit, purchase the optional AC wall adaptor before you use it in your car. Second - This unit cools about 35-40 degrees F below AMBIENT temperature. If you place this in your trunk in the middle of the summer (where your trunk is 100+ degrees), this unit will only cool to 60F. If you bring an infrared thermometer with you, you can scope out placement for this unit and get the desired fridge (40F) or Freezer (10F) temps you're looking for. you also need to make sure the heat exchanger on the outside of the unit has some "breathing room". I've found in the summer time, that I can place it on my middle back seats, with the heat exchanger side sitting inbetween the driver and passenger front seats, and if I point my A/C vent directly at it, I can achieve temps as low as 15F inside the cooler. You can basically make small adjustments to your vents to raise or lower temps at that point (once again, having a cheap 15-20 dollar infrared thermometer makes this possible/easy). Third - Realize these units use about 3-4 more electricity than their equivalent compressor based counterparts. This means you can probably run one for about an hour or two off your car battery before it's dead, but that's it!!! If you plan on using something like this long term at home/office, or especially if you plan on using it off-grid a lot, you may be better off with a compressor based unit so you don't run out of/use too much electricity. This unit hooked up to the AC wall adaptor will pull 72 watts of power continuously, if you leave it running 24/7 at a standard rate of .12cents per kWh, it'll cost you 6 dollars a month to keep it plugged in. I only use this unit on trips where I'm in our car a lot. Alternatives - If you need something that uses less power for off-grid or long term use, and you don't mind the extra 10-15 lbs worth of weight, I recommend that you get a compressor based unit instead. They are pricey, but I did find a Massimo 50qt unit at costco for only 300 bucks (so only twice the price of this thing). Compressor based units also generally involve auto-shutoff battery saving features, and better temperature control that you don't need an infrared gun to monitor ;-). Bonus tip - Amazonbasics sells some Large rectangular ice packs that fit on the shelf mounts PERFECTLY. I purchased some of those to create a mini-freezer within this cooler. Worked great on a 12 hour long road trip. Frozen food only got up to 15F, and the refrigerated side stayed around 30-35F for the whole trip. Makes this unit quite versatile. Have fun!!

Took this out of the box and promptly went on a two week road trip. This ran fine every day, including 24 hrs a day for the first 9 days until the AC adapter quit working. (after that, when we stopped at a hotel for the night, I emptied it into the hotel mini fridge..) I wanted to see how it would chill from room temperature, I put four bottles of room temp wine into this when I first plugged it in, left it plugged in overnight, and they were chilled by morning. After that, while on the road, everything stayed cold. For those wondering about leaving it plugged in for extended periods, we left this plugged in for a little over 6 hours while at the San Diego Zoo, and the car (3 year old Dodge Grand Caravan) started up just fine. We also left it plugged in for about 7 hours while in a hotel in Reno that didn't have a fridge. Car also started fine the next day. No dimming of lights or anything, so while the caveat is obvious that your car may not have as good of a battery, several hours while the car isn't running should not be a problem. Our food stayed cold during these times, I'm sure it helped that we had everything already cold, and kept the cooler pretty full. The van got pretty warm during the Zoo visit, but the food and bottles of water were still cold when we got back. Giving this a five star review because it worked perfectly for us, but you should know that the matching Coleman 120v wall adapter quit working after about 8 days. I'm having a replacement sent, but the adapter got hot to the touch when plugged into the wall so I'm pretty sure before our next road trip I'll be investing in something a little more heavy duty... My only other complaint after living on the road with this is the lack of wheels. If you have a hotel cart (or a valet service do all the work for you) at every stop, moving it around is no big deal, but it can get heavy if you have to carry it when it's full of food...

We bought one of these a loooooonnnnnnggg time ago. Older than my college age children. Boy, did we use it a lot. On that one the cord could disconnect and it switched from heating to cooling depending on how it was plugged in. Then there was a separate cord for plugging it into a regular wall electrical outlet (the first half plugs into a car cigarette lighter). When using it we would bring it in the house, plug it in to cool it down, load it, and transfer it to the car/truck and plug into cigarette lighter. Worked like a gem. I also used it when grocery shopping as I travel pretty far for that sometimes. The electrical cord finally failed and the fan was beginning to make some sounds that it was one its last legs. This was after 20 some years! I bought this one to replace it and was surprised it didn't have the same cord setup. It came with the non-detachable cigarette lighter plug in for cool only. That's ok as we never used the warm feature. I did buy the electrical cord attachment to plug into a regular outlet. However, as others noted on here, about 2 months after purchasing and using it for a longer road trip and then just a few small trips to our cabin, the plug overheated and it simply stopped working. After searching posts here, my husband took apart the plug (cigarette lighter portion) and found a blown fuse and a spring that was not springy. He said he could fix it, but I contacted coleman right away. And....Coleman requested some purchase info and model info and quickly sent me a brand new unit. This new unit has the plug/cord like our original. It detaches from the cooler. The unit works fine and hopefully will continue to do so. Great customer service! So, this cooler is awesome but perhaps this model is old and coleman has already redesigned it. Perhaps look for a different seller and the cord/plug in I described.

Used twice. Was on continuously for 10 days. Had thermometer inside was in the 30s with occasionally up to 42° degrees Fahrenheit. Recommend placing cold items inside the unit first. Also, she had to disconnect power source about 4 times for an hour as the fan starting making a noise, froze up. We also purchased two universal 120 volt wall adapters to rotate them and try avoid overheating them as she uses this for 7 to 13 days of continuous service. Ambient air temperature can not be in the 90s, I our case ambient temp was 75 to about 82. Anything higher than than 82 outside temperature will be mid 40s and higher inside cooler temperatures. This works great for inside car, camping if temperatures are below 82 and inside house ( in our case inside climate controlled tent. For the price it does as advertised. This can only keep food cold with the right ambient(outside air temperatures) and you need to monitor for internal fan freezing, you can hear it. Just unplug it and it will thaw. In our case for about an hour. Highly recommend a good thermometer to monitor inside temperatures especially if you try to store perishable food. Going to use inside my truck as inside temperatures will not be about 80 and the alternator can handle the load.

First - Buy the ‘other’ brand!! Just don’t take the risk/gamble with this Coleman iceless ice chest. If you think you want this chest read all the other 1 star reviews, a constant pattern very close to mine appears over and over in the reviews; fairly fast failure rate, defective plug that overheats to dangerously hot temp with BURN or FIRE DANGER, and heat breaks the plug. A potentially damaging and dangerous issue. Unit I received; Arrived DEAD ON ARRIVAL. But appeared the 12v cigarette plug style plug had previously got so HOT it MELTED parts of of the plastic, and the plug plastic broke from the head after cooling off. I didn’t read reviews until after I bought this, I guess I wanted to like this chest. So I was sold a returned unit that had already failed on someone else. I did try replacing fuse even though original fuse appeared to be good. The plug started heating up to extremely HOT temperature very quickly (FIRE or BURN RISK = DANGEROUS!) , and fan was much LOUDER than my like chest from “the other brand” competitor (think Arctic living) for this iceless chest. To bad, as I wanted to like this chest, good looking, nicer chest appearance and basic chest quality compared to competitor, but cooling unit flawed & subpar, is smaller and louder than other brand and dangerously flawed with in manufacturing or poor engineering. Obviously true dangers and reliability as way too many reviews essentially say the same thing, Plug overheats to dangerously hit temperatures, and unit has high failure rate in very short period of time based on so many 1 star reviews with like issues. Do yourself a favor and buy the other brand. This chest until redesigned is a waist of money, and potentially very dangerous including burns or fire hazard. I typically read the 1 and 2 star reviews (disregarding any shipping damage complaints) to see if there is a trend of trouble and ratio to 4-5 star reviews. I didn’t read the reviews before hand, I wish I had. I was impressed with overall appearance and build quality of the outer plastic insulated chest and lid compared to my other 12v competitor brand (think Arctic cold living), but bulky side unit increases needed foot print, but also help fan vent area from getting obstructed. Inside both are comparable but the internal fan size on this Coleman is much smaller which leads me to think it will take longer to cool than my other brand name iceless chest that has worked flawlessly for 3 years including constant use for 6+ month 24/7. In the brief time I had unit plugged in it not seem as cold or to cool as fast as the ‘other’ brand also. Very disappointing this was dead on arrival, unit was dirty and had obviously been returned, probably because it failed on the first buyer and was just repacked by Amazon.

I purchased this cooler just prior to going to visit my daughter in Houston Texas. I planned to drive from my home in New York state to Houston. Google Maps says that is about 1,750 miles each way. My car odometer agrees. I wanted something to keep some snacks and drinks cool along the way and did not want to worry about where I could get ice. Amazon, bless them, got it to me the Friday before I planed to leave on Monday. Since it is not a refrigeration unit I assumed it would take some time to get cold. I plugged it in Saturday morning (I also bought the power brick) and let it rum. Since I was not sure if it would really get cold I placed a thermometer inside so I could check. The temperature in the living room was about 74 degrees. By Sunday evening the cooler registered at 30 degrees. I packed the cooler with soda cans and water bottles chilled in the refrigerator. Also, some cut up veggies etc.. Other than the time the unit was unplugged during transport between the car and the hotel room it was running 24/7 for 7 days counting the two before I left. The unit gave no problems while running in the car and the power brick never got more than warm to the touch. Never hot. I used the cooler exactly the same way on the return trip. The only problem I ever had was that some of my cut up veggies froze in their plastic container box. They actually had visible frost on them and were stuck together. All-in-all, I found the unit very convenient to use. It will be in the back seat of the car on any future trips around the country. EDIT: One thing I should add. During my stay in Houston the unit ran 24/7 for 9 days using the power adapter.

I bought our second one in August of 2017 after owning the first one since the late 1990’s …. we are just now starting to see a decline in the cold but it is still going strong - when it is time …. we will go with a much larger unit

I see many people have had trouble with this unit. My problem is that the temperature varies a lot (from 28 degrees to 60) with no change in the ambient temperature. I have a wireless temperature probe in it to keep checking. I've had it camping for a week using the power adapter (which does get very warm but so far not hot enough to melt or burn). I've also used it in my bedroom which stays at a temperature of about 74 degrees and the cooler still varies a lot as above. If it stayed at 40 degrees below the ambient temperature consistently I would be happy but it doesn't. I doubt that this unit is going to last long. It's pricy for the problems it presents. Added 7/25/15: I have used this on 2 trips now and it just doesn't get very cold - certainly not 40 degrees below ambient temperature. It no longer fluctuates between 28 and 60 degrees. It just cools about 20 degrees below ambient temperature which isn't enough for perishable items like milk or meat. However, I have found a solution that seems to work fairly well. I bought a portable ice maker, put a bin in the cooler and filled it with ice. The temperature now holds at about 40 degrees which is still only 30 degrees below the current ambient temperature. With the bin holding ice, no water runs into the cooler and I can easily dump the melt water out daily. In a day only a third of the ice melted. Then I just fill the bin back up with ice. But....I shouldn't have to use ice with a thermoelectric cooler.

Excelente producto

Nous l’avons utilisé cet été pour notre voyage aux ÎLE DE LA MADELEINE et nous l’avons adoré. Très efficace et très pratique. Fabrication robuste. Je le recommande sans hésiter.

have only used a few times but works good. Convenient that you can set it up in two different ways, upright or cooler style. As others mention it is not a fridge and so it only cools to a certain degree below the surrounding temperature but it does this quite well.

Muy bien 👍

NOTE: If you are buying a AC to DC adapter be sure it is 12V-10A (Coleman specification states 6A-10A). 5A current is not recommended. For those people reporting their plug gets hot, your adapter may be inadequate, hopefully that helps. Coleman Cooler... a standard for camping and traveling, makes a good seat too. Hugely extends ability to store food on long trips. Stands upright like a mini-fridge, or flat, with a reversible lid to open from the desired direction. Some personal observations: Several good usage tips in the instructions leaflet. As light as a same size hard cooler; cannot use regular ice. Noisy electric appliance fan sound, too loud to go unnoticed. Cools in 3 hours (when empty), as the instructions say, and as advertised is cooling close to 40F degrees below ambient temperature — which is great, will keep beverages icy cold (or less in warm weather); adding frozen food drops temps even further (and thaws very slowly). Uses a simple thermoelectric design, it works, but offers no temperature control or monitoring that could improve storage beyond temporary transport; may very well function as refrigeration but clearly not the intended purpose. Must be wary about draining your vehicle battery. Can take some bumps, I'm sure, but will require cleaning the fans once in a while and be protected from dust; also kept away from open water, rain, splashes. You'll like the size, familiarity, and better ability to sustain low temperature than typical thermoelectrics. Made in USA (with US & foreign components); surprisingly I had to look very closely at label fine print to be certain, as a quick search online said otherwise. This isn't cheap, expensive in Canada, yet worthwhile if it meets your needs; wish a AC inverter came with; paying a premium for name and (looks like) durable quality. I expect it to last a long time with proper care and handling; Coleman parts are available but fans & fuses are stock parts you can find elsewhere in a pinch — by the way, maintenance repairs are not usually complicated.