The Best Car Coolers and Portable Refrigerators for Your Next Road Trip

If you are in the market for a feature-rich portable fridge, look no further than the BougeRV CRPRO25. This 26-quart fridge/freezer is an ideal companion for your next road trip. It comes with an adjustable temperature setting that lets you set the temperature anywhere from -8 degrees Fahrenheit to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This means you can use it is a freezer to keep meat and ice cream frozen, or you can use it as a fridge to keep your drinks cool.

Designed to operate quietly, the BougeRV CRPRO25 is outfitted with a user-friendly smart panel to make temperature adjustments, bright interior light, exterior bottle opener, and four tie-down points. But what really sets it apart is a multi-functional storage box which has room for a portable power bank. With the portable power bank installed, you can keep the CRPRO25 running without plugging it into a power source.

Speaking of power, the BougeRV CRPRO25 consumes 45W in MAX mode and just 36W in ECO mode. It also boasts a three-level car battery protection system to help protect your car battery from draining when the voltage is low.

You can save 30% off of a BougeRV CRPRO25 is you use the code BJ30 at checkout.

None of the coolers on our list illustrate the phrase “you get what you pay for” better than this option from ICECO. You’ll pay more for this product, but for your money, you get a cooler that promises better performance and longevity than many other portable powered coolers.

This is a versatile cooler, boasting the flexibility to run on 12- or 24-volt DC current or 110- or 240-volt AC household power. While many of the other coolers we selected for our list are capable of keeping food and drinks chilled or frozen, this recommendation can be set to maintain a temperature anywhere between -7 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That means you can easily chill or freeze food that’s at room temperature when you load it up without space-hogging ice or freezer packs.

ICECO equips this cooler with a Secop compressor for fast cooling. You can also run this cooler in an eco mode that consumes less electricity and prolongs run time when you’re powering it with a battery.

With your purchase, ICECO includes an insulated protective bag and a 12-foot-long DC power cable. The compressor is warrantied for five years, and everything else is covered by a one-year warranty.

While its price won’t be suited to every budget, Setpower's option gets a nod from us for its 53-quart capacity, the most generous of any of the items in our list of the best car coolers.

To give you an idea of its size, Setpower says you can pack 70 soda cans, 42 pint-sized water bottles, or 12 wine bottles in the AJ50 variant. A wire storage basket lets you store delicate food separately from hard/heavy items. You can use this recommendation as a fridge/freezer as well as a cooler. Setpower says the compressor is powerful enough to chill or freeze food and drink from room temperature, and you can set the temperature to any point between 0 and 50 degrees F.

A 38-pound weight means you’ll get a bit of a workout moving this cooler around, but it has robust-looking carry handles at either end. Setpower sells this particular cooler with DC (12/24-volt) and AC (110/240-volt) power cables, so you can use this portable cooler at home just as easily as you would in your car or camper. An auto shut-off system with three settings lets you protect your vehicle’s battery when running this cooler with the engine turned off.

Here's our recommendation for a basic cooler if you're shopping on a budget. While the first few items in our list are basically portable fridge-freezer units, this Ivation product is a simpler electric car cooler that will keep your food and drinks cool but not frozen.

This is a dual-power cooler that you can run on a 12-volt DC power source—like your vehicle’s cigarette lighter—or on 110-volt AC current with the included adapter for household outlets. Both adapters stow in convenient compartments built into the lid.

Ivation says this device will keep drinks as cool as 40 degrees F and can also keep food warm up to 130 degrees F. However, those are its only settings; it can’t be set to any temperatures in between those points. The company also says this option will work best if you load it with drinks or food that has already been chilled or warmed up. As some buyers have noted, it will take a long time to cool or heat items from ambient temperature.

While the cooler’s capacity is relatively modest, Ivation says it’s large enough to accommodate 2-liter soda bottles. This cooler weighs 10.6 pounds, so it’s relatively easy to move around even when loaded.

Designed to look like an old-fashioned home refrigerator, AstroAI’s minifridge is tiny, measuring 10 inches high by 9.45 inches deep and 6.9 inches wide. Its 4-liter internal capacity is just large enough to accommodate six regular-size soda cans, and a weight of fewer than five pounds empty allows for easy transportation.

AstroAI says it designed this little fridge for more than just keeping drinks cold. It’s also ideal for storing cosmetics and skin care products, breast milk, and other items that are perishable at room temperature.

This cooler will take items from room temperature down to 37 degrees F in three hours, and you can also use it to keep food or drink hot at up to 150 degrees F. The company makes it clear this product is not designed to warm things up from ambient temperatures but claims your items will stay warm for hours after the device is turned off. Actual cooling and warming performance will vary somewhat depending on the ambient temperature.

This minifridge ships with a 12-volt DC cigarette lighter cable for use in your vehicle and a 110-volt AC adapter, so you can also plug it in at home or in your office.

This option from Wagan is another lightweight cooler—it weighs a scant 8.7 pounds empty. Once loaded with food and drink it will obviously be heavier, but the included shoulder strap leaves your hands free for carrying other items.

This cooler’s design lends itself well to serving as a central console in a vehicle’s back seat and includes cupholders so your passengers can enjoy drinks on the road. Its capacity is 14 liters. While it’s advertised as a 12-volt cooler, Wagan sells an optional AC adapter that lets you plug it into a household power outlet. The standard 9-foot-long DC power cable connects to your vehicle’s cigarette lighter.

As with the Ivation cooler discussed above, this Wagan unit works best to keep your items cold or warm but is not designed to efficiently chill or heat your food and drink from room temperature. The company says this cooler's temperature range is 32 degrees F (the freezing point) to 140 degrees F. You can’t select any temperatures between those two points, but changing between cooling and warming modes is as simple as flipping a switch. Simple green and red LED indicators tell you at a glance which mode it is set to.

The 36-liter Bodega car fridge is pricy, but it's less expensive than our Editor's Pick, yet it has four more liters capacity.

To put this model's capacity in perspective, Bodega claims it will hold 41 cans of cola, 21 bottles of water, or ( somewhat humorously) "13 bottles of red wine." The compressor-chilled cooler will operate on 12 volts from your car's cigarette lighter or power port, but it can also be powered by 120-volt or 240-volt current from a wall outlet. The refrigerated compartment includes a divider and independent temperature control for both areas via a phone app. According to the manufacturer, the contents can be chilled down to 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Wheels, interior lighting, and a drain hole are thoughtful touches.

Bodega offers models with a capacity greater than 36 liters which are correspondingly more expensive. The larger 53-liter Bodega seems to be the most widely available.

There were complaints from a few users; most cited poorly-written instructions. Others found that the unit was slow to cool when full. However, most small-capacity refrigerators perform better when maintaining the temperature of pre-chilled contents rather than chilling warm items, in all the Bodega clocked in with a respectable 85% positive customer rating.

The 48-quart Koozam K-box electric cooler is one of the larger models reviewed here. It’s a thermoelectric cooler, which will keep pre-chilled items cold but won’t bring warm items down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Like other similar coolers, it can maintain a warm environment too. A removable interior divider helps keep contents under control.

This model has built-in 6-foot power cords that connect with either 12-volt (cigarette lighter style) or 120-volt supplies. The K-Box weighs 17.1 pounds empty; there are wheels, but given their small size, we think they’re for positioning the cooler rather than rolling it over long distances.

Gripes about slow cooling and difficult maneuverability marred the otherwise favorable user experiences. The K-Box still managed 81% positive reviews. This model is markedly less expensive than the 53-quart Setpower AJ50 reviewed above, which earned an exemplary 91% positive rating.

Should you buy a car cooler with a compressor or a thermoelectric model?

Can you put ice inside an electric car cooler?

How long can you leave an electric cooler plugged into your vehicle?

You can run an electric cooler plugged into your vehicle for as long as you want, so long as the vehicle is running, which keeps the battery charged.

When your vehicle is off, be careful not to leave the cooler running for too long because it will drain the battery after two to three hours, which can leave you stranded as the battery may not have enough power left in it to start the engine.

What’s the difference between running your cooler on 12-volt DC power and 110-volt AC household electricity?

As far as your cooler is concerned, there isn’t much difference. All of these coolers in our list are designed to operate on 12-volt automotive DC power. The ones that can be plugged into a household outlet have adapters, like the one you use to plug a laptop computer into the wall to convert your home’s 110-volt AC power to the DC current the cooler requires.

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