20 Best 12V fridges on the market in 2022: Comparison Table

Customers' Choice | Most Discussed & Reviewed

Best Value | Best Budget

Most Popular for hospitals, hotels, offices, and student dorms | Best Free-standing

Product recommendations for different situations

• Portable 12V refrigerator for car // SUV // RV // truck // van // boat

This small 12V thermoelectric Cooler/Warmer is a good option to consider. If you’re looking for something bigger and more professional, go for a solid metal Whynter 85 Quart 12V True Freezer with a temperature range of -8°F to 50°F.

• Portable refrigerator for a farmer's market // for catering

I’m pretty familiar with catering, and I know it involves a lot of moving and carrying around, so my best bets are coolers with excellent and reliable handles and wheels like this one.

For keeping fish fresh for several days, you may like this heavy-duty (52 Quart/49 Liters) blow-molded ice chest with a reinforced base. 

If you’re looking to keep your produce (cupcakes, cheesecakes, etc.) cool, then it’s best to invest in a mini fridge. I’ve done the research, and some recommended this mini fridge. Although the seller positions it as a wine/bottle cooler, many have also used it for other things with great success.

• Portable refrigerator for long trips

Mini-fridge is a better choice for long travels than a simple cooler bag. Dometic 12V Bordbar might be handy for travelers always on the road. It is compact, lightweight, and easy to carry. It keeps frozen food for up to two days in a hotel room even when unplugged. 

• Portable refrigerator for office

If you have a lot of people in your office, it might be a good idea to invest in a regular fridge. But if you’re not ready to buy a bigger fridge or there’s not enough space in the office, then we recommend this compact, free-standing fridge. It is also a good choice for hospitals, hotels, offices, and student dorms.

• Portable refrigerator for medicine // insulin // vaccine

This lightweight (only 4 lbs) skincare mini fridge is suitable for drinks, cosmetics, and medicine.

Testing & Customers Reviews

We found reviews from real YouTube bloggers about the products from our article.

solarcabin: "I've been off grid now for over 20 years. It's not often that I've come across a product that works so well for off gridders that I give it my outstanding review. One of those products has been the Ecotemp l5 propane water heater that I have at my cabin for over 15 years. The other product that I can now put my stamp of approval on for off-grid is the Alpicool C20 Refrigerator/Freezer. I've been using this 24/7 all the time full-time off-grid at my cabin. This will freeze your food solid if you set it that low. And you can set it so that it will keep the stuff that's on the bottom frozen and use it as a refrigerator on top. So it works as kind of a dual purpose refrigerator/freezer. One of the things that I really like about it is they are really well insulated and I think that is the key along with having this uh dan foss type compressor which is just an excellent compressor. The lid and the side walls are really thick on this one. They're a good inch and a half thick of insulation. That really makes a difference and because it's a chest type freezer the cold settles down on the bottom. So you're not leaking out cold every time you open up the lid. They don't use any toxic chemicals in the compressor and it works in a way that it pulls the warm air out of the refrigerator and it cools it right down and in fact in less than about 10 minutes it can bring this right down to temperature and it will have your fruits your food completely frozen in an hour if you just leave the food in there. I set mine for 18 celsius which is about freezing and that keeps everything froze on the bottom it will keep the stuff on top nice and crisp without freezing it like my salads and stuff like that. Depending on where you live the temperature in the room will have an effect on what you need to set yours at.

These do have a low battery shut off protector. You can set it on the eco mode which is where I keep mine all the time. It will read your battery and if it starts getting to where it might run your battery down to where it could do damage to the battery or if you're using in a vehicle and you don't want it to kill your battery so you could start your vehicle the next morning it will shut off before it goes to that point. It runs about three times for about three minutes in an hour so it only runs about 10 minutes out of an hour of time and during that time it's only using between 40 and 45 watts depends on the ambient temperatures. So you can run one of these off of a very small system and right now I have mine run off just 200 watts of solar power and a 200 amp hour LiFePO4 battery. These will run off of even just a 100 watt panel and a 100 amp hour battery however you might not make it clear through the night and it may shut down you have to recharge the next day. But you don't have to worry about your food spoiling just because you don't make it completely through the night because this is well insulated. It will actually hold in the temperature for a good four to six hours depending on the outside temperature. So you can run it most of the night even on 100 watt system. You're still going to keep your food fresh. Then the next day as soon as the sun comes up it will start running off of the solar panel.

I've got everything in here: frozen burritos, sausages, a quart of milk, my salad dressing, beer, hot dogs, a big package of chicken patties, a big package of hamburger and french fries. I've got all kinds of food in here just in this 20 liter and this is plenty of space and size for one person or even two people. If you've got a family that you're going to feed or if you want to store food for a longer period of time because I usually go to town at least once a week then get one of the bigger units. And Alpicool does carry several models anywhere clear up to a 94 liter which is a really big unit. They have a really good seal around the lid. And these will run off of either 12 volt, 24 volt, or 110 volt which makes them really convenient. Excellent units. I've had mine now for more than two years now and it has worked 24/7 and never given me a bit of problem. Always keeps the food very fresh and uses very low power. And I can highly recommend this unit for off gridders, for people that are living in their vans, van dwellers, overlanders, and campers or for an emergency refrigerator/freezer system.

You have maybe a regular big fridge and freezer in your house and your grid houses but what happens if the power goes out? A lot of your food is just going to spoil. You're not going to be able to eat it fast enough. If you have one of these in backup you can hook it up to a small solar system, generator or even to your vehicle battery and you could keep enough of your food fresh to get you through several days of blackout. A lot of people do have medications like insulin that needs to be kept cold. You could use one of these to keep your medications cold so you don't run out of medications during a blackout or something like that. So that is another advantage of these small units. They are also lightweight enough that you can carry it in your vehicle and a lot of truckers are using these now because they can run right off of their battery and they can take them with them. A lot of people that camp are now using this because they're basically like a cooler, the same size. You can take it along with you but instead of having to buy ice you can just use the refrigerator and run it right off of your vehicle batteries which is really convenient. You can take it into a hotel room if you're going to be gone for a long period of time. You don't want to go out and eat at restaurants which can get really expensive. So a lot of advantages."

Lisa Hildreth: "I use Whynter FM-85G in my online grocery delivery business. I have it mounted in my van, a little Nissan NV200 so it doesn't take up much space. I've had this for about two years and this thing works great and let me tell you it gets a beating. Lots of space inside. It has two separate holding areas and it's incredibly durable. Again I've used this for two years without incident and you know I'm all over the place with my grocery delivery service. It has a nice digital readout for the thermometer. That's got nice carrying handles and and I would highly recommend this if you're boondocking or if you have a business or even if you want something in your truck or van. That's incredibly durable.

Or if you're living on the road RVing and you want extra refrigeration. As we all know those RV refrigerators are super small. This is a way to go. And the way I have this connected is we installed a power inverter and a deep cycle battery and I can let this run this big freezer and my Whynter refrigerator. It will run for four hours without the van being turned on. And we just ran a solenoid up to the front and so that when the van is actually running the battery will recharge but when the van is turned off that solenoid kicks off the signal so that we're not draining the battery of the actual van."

The Great Outdoors: "I've ran Alpicool K25 Portable Refrigerator in my camper van probably for five or six days in very extreme heat 80-90 degree weather outside and it sat inside the van, which who knows how hot it was in the van, and it ran perfectly all night long and all day. I have a 100 watt solar panel on the top and two batteries in the in the van and a couple of those days was actually kind of overcast so I didn't have a good charge on the batteries but it ran flawlessly. It's got two modes on it it's got an eco mode and a max mode. I run it on the eco mode and it runs great. I can run it on the max mode too and it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of effect on it but when you do change it you can hear the compressor slow down and you can see the battery go up maybe a tenth or two tenths of a volt.

The only thing I'd be a little worried about is there's these little plastic handles on the side. They don't feel like they're the sturdiest. So the way I do it is I load it up once I get it into the vehicle. I don't load it up and then carry it out so I kind of keep the weight down on it. But, yep, it's definitely nice. Love the little led light that's on the inside. There is a plug in the bottom of it so if you do have ice or anything like that or anything that melts you can drain it out the bottom and it will develop a little bit of frost around the inside of it if it's in extremely humid weather. You can put it just about anywhere. It's not that big but yet it holds a lot and I'm extremely impressed by how cold it gets, how steady the temperature stays and how quiet it is."

Types of portable fridges

There’s a crazy number of portable 12 V fridges on the market; you’ll be hard-pressed to find the best option. There are three basic types: classic ice chests, compressors, and thermoelectric refrigerators. 

• Ice chests, as the name implies, use ice as a primary heat absorber: any heat that flows into a refrigerator will melt the ice before getting into the fridge’s contents. You may like this heavy-duty (52 Quart/49 Liters) blow-molded ice cooler with a reinforced base. It is also suitable for storing fresh fish.
• Compressors work on the same technology as air conditioners and regular household refrigerators. The compressor pumps fluid into a condenser, which makes its way into the evaporator, and liquid begins to evaporate to gas. Simply put, through this continuous cycle, the heat flows into the evaporator inside the refrigerator, where it’s cooled down.
• Thermoelectric refrigerators work on the Peltier Effect, based on a heat differential that’s created through the movement of electrical currents between two different types of conductors. One part in the Peltier cooler gets hot, it’s therefore put outside, and the other one – is cool, thus, placed inside the refrigerator.

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