You might have seen other car fridges on the market that are low priced, they’re not real fridges!
They’re what’s known as thermo-fridge or thermoelectric fridge, and sometimes it’s not obvious whether they’re real fridges or not. It’s a case of buyer beware, you need to do your research.
A thermo-fridge uses a constant supply of power through an electrical circuit that creates heat on one side of a thermoelectric component and cooling on the other. The cool side is placed inside the ‘fridge’ and the heated side is placed on the outside of the ’fridge’. This means they constantly need power in order to cool – and half the energy is going into creating heat inside your vehicle!
The other problem is they’re only able to cool down to around 25°C below ambient. Leave a thermo-fridge in your car on a hot day and as the car heats up to 40 or even 50° the thermo-fridge is only able to cool down to 15 or 25°C – that’s definitely not cold enough to safely keep your food!
On the other hand, a compressor fridge like all FROZEN fridge circulates refrigerant throughout the fridge walls to keep the contents cold, once the desired temperature has been reached the compressor cycles on and off to regulate the temperature and save power. Plus another advantage of a compressor fridge is the superior cooling ability! Able to cool down to around 50°C below ambient, even on the hottest days it’ll keep your food and drinks icy cold!
Compressor fridges (like FROZEN) are more efficient, are able to cool to a much lower temperature and can even be used as a freezer! There’s a reason your fridge at home uses a compressor. So, do your research as some ‘fridges’ that seem to offer good value aren’t really fridges at all!