Car Fridge

The Aspenora 54-Quart Portable Fridge Freezer looks great and seems to after testing 48hrs maintains good accurate temperature settings. Testing with no food about 2 degrees off. However, with food in the unit, it was dead-on!. Will be taking a trip with it in the car south and will give an update 30 days from now.Today is (11/09/2020). The unit is very quiet running. And YES, I would recommend this product thus far!Capt. Rob of StarGazer IIUPDATE: 11/12/2020 8:44 pm After placing into my car and driving south for 3 days plugged into the car's 12VDC with frozen steaks, shrimp, and more... I made many stops to see the temperature with some stops 1hour or so, and she ran BEAUTIFULLY. Because of its lightweight, it was easy to bring into the hotel and plug into 110 vac.The runtime so far has been 24hrs for 3 days. It's GREAT! I Will add more later on a boat trip in 3 more day'sCapt. Rob of SV/StarGazer IIUPDATE: 12/05/2020 Installed Filters on open grills to the unit fan to trap dust but has great airflow. By using the velcro "hooks part only" with sticky backs and placed them at corners and mid sections about 1 inch long. Next went to hardware-type stores and purchased an air condition foam filter and cut it to the size you need to cover inlets and outlets on the unit. Just using your fingers press the filter firmly against the velcro strips and the hooks hold the filter good.Now To The Real Stuff: So far the unit has operated as 12vdc for almost 30days great with NO PROBLEMS to report. I will update again in 30days. GREAT PRODUCT from my viewpoint!- 2021 - Happy New Year! The product has been 100% running keeping food frozen and loving it. Can't say enough about its good performance. I purchased 2 units and will put unit number 2 into service on Jan 15th, 2021, and will update this as well. Capt. Rob2/28/2021 UPDATE: It's now been running 24/7 for over three months now as 12vdc and 110vac also plugged into an inverter (Pure Sine Wave a must) and still working GREAT! I do, however, recommend you install a simple filter on the two vents. This has kept the internal fans and unit compartment clean of any dust and dirt and leading to any high-temperature failures. Like anything! "You take care of it! It will take care of you!"Capt. Rob of SV STARGAZER II8/22/2021 UPDATE: It's been almost a year now and all is great!!! With proper cleaning of vents, she's been operating 24/7 the whole time with no problems.Capt. RobUPDATE: 07/27/2022 1:39 estHi all, Today is a hot 86deg weather. However, we just went threw a week of 90 Deg ++ for a week and the unit function FLAWLESSLY.. PURCHASED in 2020 and running 24/7 for 2 years now! I guess you can see the smiles on my face :)Capt. Rob

Lasted 4 years and still froze everything but lid hinges broke from use. I used every day in a semi and loved it. Low power use and rugged as hell (except for the hinges) but they lasted four years so I really can’t complain. Wish All state honored the warranty that they sold me four years ago. But don’t let me get started on that that has nothing to do with this company.

Aspenora AS-BPR52SFirst, about my 4 star rating. Many people would give this fridge 5 stars. I didn’t because I prefer a more European style of rating. 5 stars would mean this is truly exceptional, and as I only have experience with two different fridges I’m not qualified to rate it as such, even if it was.The unit I received came reasonably packaged and was cosmetically perfect. The overall impression is a clean and well laid out design. The removable handles are firmly attached with substantial machine screws threaded into metal. The handle brackets are fairly substantial, and look like they may be ABS, which is a very tough plastic. Even if they did fail, their decent mounting holes would remain usable. The lid works fine and has a built in LED light.The touch controls are conveniently mounted on the lid and easy to work, although it took me a little effort getting used to them as I generally avoid touch screens whenever I can. The instructions are sufficiently clear to enable use. My only complaint is that, except for the temperature setting, the display does not show the current settings for any other parameters. You can see what will be the new value, but only when you hit the + or – change button. I like the wide range of control available. You can independently set both the upper and lower compressor cut-in and cut-out offset temperatures (hysteresis). Also, the full temperature range is broken into 3 segments and you can set a separate correction offset for each of these. In my tests this kept the measured and set temperatures to within about +/- 2 deg. of each other over the entire range of 10 to -20 deg. NB: All temperatures are in deg. C.I did 3 days of extensive testing to determine its actual cooling capacity and see how much power it consumed. This is important to me as I plan to use this long term on solar power, and sometimes leave it unattended for multiple days in a closed car where it might get up to 45 deg. There are 2 parameters of interest: How much can it cool below the ambient temp, and how many amp-hours (Ah) it will use for that cooling. Note: The relevant cooling is the depression below ambient. That is, cooling to -20 on a 20 deg. day is equivalent to cooling to 0 on a 40 deg. day. This equivalence was verified in my tests. All my Aspenora tests were done without extra insulation, tests on a Dometic CF-18 showed that extra insulation increased cooling capacity at moderate and lower cooling levels, but not the maximum ones. I have a speculative explanation for this which would apply to the Aspenora also. The graph shows the results of my tests for both this and the CF-18 fridges. This 1.8 cu ft unit has a better surface to volume ratio than the 1/3 sized CF-18 so it’s not surprising that it’s cooling limit is 52 vs 47 deg. I include the CF-18 data to give an idea of how helpful extra insulation might be.I measured the current over a period of about 10 minutes starting from compressor startup. Typically, at 12 volts, it has a soft start at about 2.5 amps, ramps up to 4 amps at 2 minutes, then slowly decreases to about 3.5 amps and settles there. An average of about 3.7 amps should give a good estimate of consumed power. To get the Ah used multiply 3.7 by the fraction shown in the graph and by the applicable time. An estimate of the daily temp profile will be needed to get a 24-hour result. For example, say the 12-hour night average is 15, the day average is 30, and you want -10 in the fridge. Then from the graph: f(25) = .23, f(40) = .55, therefore: Ah = 0.23 x 3.7 x 12 + .55 x 3.7 x 12 = 34.6I looked at the temp in the small compartment only briefly. A thermometer in the bottom seemed to show about 10 deg. or more above the main compartment. The bottom was definitely warmed by the compressor when it worked hard in a warm room. However, unless one really wants the separately controlled temperature zones available in units costing 3 times as much I don’t see a good reason to spend that much for a small fridge.Some people are concerned about durability for rough 4WD travel, and this deserves thought. I think it can be overhyped for two reasons. One is that, from what I see in pictures, most people carry their fridge in the worst place possible from an engineering perspective. The smoothest riding place in a vehicle will be centered between the front and rear axles where, by geometry, individual wheel motion effects will be divided by 2. That’s usually approximately behind the front seats. Instead, fridges are typically carried where it is convenient, in the very rear behind the rear wheels. Geometrically, rear wheel bouncing effects are magnified in this area. My wife and I have over 50 years of experience in backcountry and off road driving and have never had problems carrying coolers and foodstuffs behind the seats. I can’t speak for “rock crawlers” as we are primarily “overlanders”. For us 4WD travel is mostly an entertaining, sometimes tedious, price to pay to get away from people and start travel on foot. I suspect that’s true for many other 4WD travelers and I suggest that with a little care a fridge like this Aspenora can be quite rugged enough for your needs.I hope this is helpful. Now it remains to see if this fridge actually holds up in actual use. I will modify this if it fails inexcusably. Were oldies and expect appliances to last 20 years, ha!

So far, so good. I purchased this unit for my freightliner cascadia semitruck. I was having to keep buying ice to use in my conventional cooler to keep things frozen. It was a hit or miss. Ice is now over 2.50 for an 8 lb bag. At 3 to 4 bags a week minimum, it wasn't making much sense. So i figured I would give this a shot. So far it has been operating well. Its extremely quiet. I have tested it both at home using 110 volt cord and now in my truck on 12v. Both cords work as expected. I can keep frozen foods frozen until I am ready to put the item in my hot logic mini. The unit is very sturdy and easy to maneuver. I do not recommend filling all the way up and then trying to move it, it weighs almost 40 pounds empty. I like that it has detachable handles, led lighting inside, and a drain in the bottom if I need it. The touch pad is simple to use and i like that it automatically locks so it can't be changed accidentally. I had hoped that the unit could set on the floor in front of my passenger seat, it is like 2 inches too long between the swoop in the dash, and being able to close the passenger door, even with both handles removed. Drat! But it fits very nicely in the bottom cupboard on the passenger's side of my bunk. I had to remove one handle to keep it from sticking too far out. Time will tell, but if it preforms like I am hoping it will, i may end up purchasing another to replace my thermoelectric cooler that I use as a fridge on my truck.