Dometic CDF-11 Smallest Portable Freezer/Refrigerator

This review is for the Dometic (CDF-11) Portable Freezer/Refrigerator.We've used this little guy almost every day for two months and it's been great. Not a single problem or anything I wish were different. I was very hesitant at first about the cost but I totally got over it because of how easy it's made our life on the road and the fact that when you need to keep perishable foods from spoiling, there just isn't another option than spending the money on a real freezer/fridge. It's worth every penny over the cost of one those thermoelectric cooler things.It's a true freezer/refrigerator--which means it will maintain the temperature you set it to--unlike thermoelectric coolers that only cool to a certain number of degrees (approx 40 F I believe) below ambient temperature. With a thermoelectric cooler, if the interior of your car is an easily reachable 110 degrees F, your food will be about 70 degrees. With this guy it can be 120 in the vehicle and our food is still 38 degrees F or 28 or whatever we've set it too. (I put a little thermometer inside so I know what's going on inside.. the unit's built in digital thermometer is accurate by the way.) All the higher ambient temp does is make the fridge run more often and use more battery/electricity.It's really amazing how very little electricity this thing uses. It uses very few amps and even then it's only for the few minutes per day that it actually runs. Most of the time it just sits there silent using no energy all, so its not putting much drain on your battery. (Plus it will turn itself off before the battery gets too low.) All I have to do is let the van idle for a few minutes every other day or so and the fridge will run indefinitely. It will run at least a few days and sometimes longer before turning itself off if I forget to start the van.It's really well insulated on its own, and I'm surprised at how long it stays cool inside when I turn it off, but If the van will be sitting in the direct sun on a hot day we pile a sleeping bag and/or sleeping pad or whatever else on top of it for added insulation and to shield if from direct sunlight.. this dramatically reduces how much energy it uses, like back to essentially none. You could also do this if you wanted to turn it off and still have your food cold for a long time.FYI, we have two batteries in the van, and at first I used a "smart" second battery isolator to prevent the starting battery from being drained by the fridge just in case. However, the isolator quit working after about a month so I took it out and haven't installed another one yet since the fridge uses so little energy plus it has a built in battery protector that turns the unit off before there's not enough energy to start the vehicle. Is a second battery isolator needed since the unit has a built in battery protector? I don't know. But I do still recommend at least a second battery if you're going to use the fridge long term like we are. I'll probably install a (better) second battery isolator back in the van just in case. You'll need to figure out for yourself the whole isolator or no isolator issue, but for now I'm liking not having an isolator because with the fridge running on both batteries now it really runs forever if I don't drive the van, and the starter also has access to both batteries.The fridge will hold a regular gallon of milk and still have room for other stuff. The unit is very quite. We have it sitting between the front seats and we never notice it running. You can hear it sometimes if the van isn't running but I don't think it would wake anyone up or anything like that. It has a little top self area for small items that don't have to be as cold as the main lower area. It has a little light inside that comes on when you open it. The unit is light enough and small enough that I can easily pick it up and take it inside if we're going to be staying in a cabin for a while. And I bought a little Pyramid Power Supply (aka AC to DC converter) that puts out about 5 amps (60 Watts) so we can run the unit inside the house. If I need to cool it down fast I flip the switch to fast cool down mode and put some cold packs from the freezer in it and it cools down in no time. Once I put almost room temp food in it when it had been off and sitting in the hot sun for days and it took about an hour and half to cool down to about 40 F in fast cool mode, but that was really asking a lot of the unit. From now on I'll pre-cool it with the cold packs, and/or bring it inside and run it off the AC/DC converter to cool it down.It's awesome. I hope this helps.

Great! So much better than buying ice. NOISE? The CDF-11 cannot be heard with normal conversation or HVAC noise in the background. Only in a perfectly quiet room with NO noise, can a small gurgling sound be heard at start-up, but then it goes away and while running is so quite that you cannot tell when it stops. Used this cooler for a trip from the southeast coast to the northwest coast running all day in the back seat and all night in the motels for a week out west and a week back, plus two and a half weeks while out west. Absolutely no problems. CAUTION! Always use the shoulder strap. On the second day of the trip, in the rain, I did not have the shoulder strap on and when trying to hold the cooler and open the car door at the same time it slipped out of my hands and landed on the bottom corner of the cooler while half full of food. There was no damage to the cooler and it continued to run flawlessly for the following month of the trip. Very tough unit! We regularly left the cooler in the back seat with no power while doing hikes or other sight-seeing. After two hours with no power and outside temps in the middle 90's the temp inside the cooler would rise only 4 degrees F. This is fantastic! If set for 30 degrees F while using during the day, ice packs in the bottom and water will be frozen, but water, sodas, or other food items in the upper parts of the cooler will be very cold but not frozen. Raise temp to 32 or 33 during the night to avoid freezing items in the top of the unit. It's true this unit uses only 30 watts when running. If your car battery is in good shape, it will run this unit for many hours (i.e. 8 hours easy). Our car does not have full-time 12V power, but if you do have a full-time 12V power port, set the cooler to low power mode, and it will automatically turn off before draining your battery too low to start your car. A correction to some ads is this cooler has a special space designed for only ONE 1.5 liter bottle, not two. There is plenty of room for cokes, sandwich meat, cheese, condiments and other supplies for eating at roadside rest areas. Another advantage is medications can be kept at a prescribed temp. Brings a whole new level of ease to road trips. I say buy it - or if needed, buy the same thing only larger. My wife and I did just fine for a month with the CDF-11.

We just returned from vacation. I am an insulin dependent diabetic and must keep 2 types of insulin cold at all times. We purchased this to do just that and it worked wonderful. We tried it out in our garage in SC where it gets into the 100's this time of year in the afternoon. It kept everything cold at the temp we had it set for. We used both the AC and DC before leaving. It worked perfectly under very hot conditions which we put it through before leaving. I gave it 4 stars only due to the space inside. It is very small and limiting. Perfect for a few small items but don't pack a lunch as it won't fit. For medications and such, it is a life saver when traveling.

DO NOT BUY THIS!! I bought this unit dec/2015. Used it two times on trip to town and it worked fine. Getting ready for my first camping trip and it won't turn on and wouldn't you know I can't return it now. This is a rip off!!! I'm very disappointed in Dometic AND Amazon.

Just too small except for limited travel, then it would be best to just do ice in a cooler. Started getting loud after a few weeks on startup. Maybe a freak thing, not sure.

I needed a freezer that would move from the car into a hotel room or into a house but this did not come with a plug to allow that. Amazon had two plugs showing on the page for this item and I assumed they would work with the freezer but they did not. So I returned the freezer and the plugs. I also found the space provided to place something that is frozen was small; it would not have accommodated what I needed to place in it. It was delivered as promised and the return process was terrific.