Electric coolboxes - worth it?

[Sittinginthesand]

And any recommendations?

Thank you!

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This thread is a few years old now so some of the suggestions may be outdated, but we’ve recently refreshed our best cooling boxes page with plenty of Mumsnetter-approved electric options. We hope you find it helpful.
MNHQ

We have a camping gaz one.
It's pretty good- we've used it for 2 weeks in France. It holds a surprising amount- and also will chill down a bottle of wine- lagers etc.

We sometimes take things out of packages and re-wrap in foil to save on space.

We had a problem the first year we used it where it occasionally cut out and went off. We never did work out why- but found that if we manually unplugged it and plugged it back in again every day solved that problem.

We have been however on the lookout for a new one that's a different make as it's a bit of a stress wondering if the thing will turn itself off overnight.

A friend of ours recommended the Halfords one. Go outdoors are good for advice on these types of things too.

Brilliant for camping in summer.

Many electric cool boxes only chill to a certain level of degrees below the ambient temperature, so are less good in v hot weather, so check what each model can do.

Also they don’t give you the flexibility to camp without EHU, I use a high performance non electric box (such as Coleman Xtreme, Icey Tek). If I always used EHU I would consider a small fridge rather than a cool box, unless you can get one that keeps stuff really cold in hot weather.

@UpTheJunktion

Many electric cool boxes only chill to a certain level of degrees below the ambient temperature, so are less good in v hot weather, so check what each model can do.

Also they don’t give you the flexibility to camp without EHU, I use a high performance non electric box (such as Coleman Xtreme, Icey Tek). If I always used EHU I would consider a small fridge rather than a cool box, unless you can get one that keeps stuff really cold in hot weather.

Same here, the good quality ones without electric are much better. I have a lovely Yeti.

mrsrobin sorry don't want to derail but I've seen coolboxes that claim to keep ice frozen up to 3 days (have to pre-chill first), is this the case irl? I got an electrical one from Amazon but returned it as I realised a non electrical one would be more versatile.

We've never had one. If you're only going away for a few days an option would be to freeze things like meat and butter beforehand; that way they'll stay fresh for quite a bit longer while they defrost. We tend to just pop to the supermarket daily / every other day for things that need to stay chilled.

@AIMummy

mrsrobin sorry don't want to derail but I've seen coolboxes that claim to keep ice frozen up to 3 days (have to pre-chill first), is this the case irl? I got an electrical one from Amazon but returned it as I realised a non electrical one would be more versatile.

Yeti, Coleman Xtreme or Icey Tek will do this. They are expensive but last forever - nothing to go wrong or break down.

You get best performance if you pre-chill the box (put bottles of frozen water in it for 24 hours), load it with high density frozen goods (carton of frozen milk, a frozen chilli, etc) and don't leave the lid open unnecessarily or let the kids keep opening the lid.

Alternatively, save the plastic boxes you get your takeaways in, fill with water and freeze those. They're easier to stack round food than round, plastic bottles.

@AIMummy

mrsrobin sorry don't want to derail but I've seen coolboxes that claim to keep ice frozen up to 3 days (have to pre-chill first), is this the case irl? I got an electrical one from Amazon but returned it as I realised a non electrical one would be more versatile.

We have used ours for over 3 days and things stayed cool enough. We fill it up at home with bottles of frozen water etc - leave for at least 24 hours and then fill with stuff we are taking. I would say we put effort into keeping it cool for as long as poss - keeping it full - with anything, including a towel - just fill the air space. We also try to whip in and out quick, never leave the lid open, keep in in the shade etc. The ice blocks don't stay frozen for 3 days (those test results are on real ice - like cubes). But in ours stuff defo stays cool enough. It will only be cool if the stuff being put in it is cool to begin with.

Another vote for Coleman xtreme (you can also fit wine bottles upright, a very important consideration) I also pre freeze it and fill every last bit with frozen water bottles, we've actually had the problem where the chilli was still frozen 4 days later.

Our Yet also makes a handy seat/table in our tent! Sturdy and beautiful!

Yeti not Yet

UpTheJunktion and mrsrobin thank you, I'll have a look at those brands. Sounds like exactly what I'm looking for.

We’ve tried loads and no they aren’t worth it.
As above a decent normal cool box is better. Freeze bottles of water and your good for the weekend. We’ve got a couple of coleman ones on wheels now. Really good.

The electric one doesn’t stay as cool as the Coleman even doing the same things. It just flattens the battery and is a pain to clean.

The only exception I’ve found is the proper fridges you can get.

I have an electric one from Lidl. It's at least 10 years old. Only problem is the carry handle has broken. It plugs in cigarette lighter in the car when travelling and then I got an adapter plug so could go in EHU hook up. Used it in scorching South France temps just fine. I do move it into the shade though which means moving it as the sun moves. It didn't take more car space than a normal hard sided cool box which was important for us, it fitted on the floor of the car between the kids seats.

Weve got one, but once went away and somehow forgot to pack the lead so we had the cool box but couldnt plug it in and had no ice packs. The bacon and long life milk was fine in there with no cooling mechanism for a weekend. (I think we took a pre made spag bol for the first night so there wasnt a lot else in there) It was around 25° during the day!!

We bought two smaller cool boxes so we had one for drinks and one for food. As the drinks one is constantly opened and closed by the kids

I am a convert after last year. Never saw the point but needing to take milk for DS I went and bought one, have always managed previously by freezing most things before we leave but it was so much easier not having to worry about it.

To add, we only used the electric one on trips of a week or more. Many sites we were on in France had nowhere to refreeze blocks so keeping a non elec one cold enough was a bit of a problem.

Buying bags of ice is the way round a week with a cool box

Thank you! I’ve done the freezing everything/ cool box swapping / wet tea towels thing for years now and wondering if the electric cool box is worth it in terms of reduced hassle, keeping things cold and especially less drippy/messy.Those who have used them - any particular recommendations?

We had one and although we did use it, it was a bit of a hassle.

Firstly, it was big and bulky so needs somewhere you can store it.

Second, although it had a plug-in cable for the car, we couldn't use our model when we were actually travelling, which seemed stupid. I wasn't going to plug it in when the car was parked! (Newer models may allow this though - this was a long time, when they were first launched)

Third, when it was on, it was very, very noisy. That sounds a minor irritation, but actually it became increasingly so!

TBH I found it most useful when I was defrosting our freezer at home! I'd run down the food in the freezer so that it would (mostly) fit into the electric cool box, and keep it in there until the freezer had finished defrosting.

If we needed something again, I'd go with a much lighter, 'manual' one, and use the frozen plastic boxes/bottles trick, along with tea-towels for extra insulation.