Portable fridges are great, allowing you to actively chill your food and drinks on the go. Problem is, they’ve always taken on the same top-access ice box form factor from traditional coolers, which makes it hard to get items from the fridge when it’s in the back of the car with a bunch of other gear piled on top of it. Fortunately, that’s not the case with the Iceco VL45 Plus.
Like other portable fridges, it opens from the top, allowing you to easily load it with food and drinks. Unlike them, the top lid can open either from the front or the back, while also coming with a drop-down opening on the side, giving you different ways to access its contents easily. That means, you simply place it in the boot of the car with the side access facing out and you’ll be able to get anything from the main compartment without having to mess with the stack of gear you have piled on top.
The Iceco VL45 Plus is billed as a three-way access freezer, since you can open the top lid from the front and back, as well as open it from the side. For the top lid, it uses a dual-latch hinge system that uses spring-loaded pins on either side. Pulling the front handle retracts the front pins while the rear ones remain locked and vice versa, enabling the bidirectional access. For the side access, it uses a drop-down door to create an opening while a pull-out basket makes it easy to get items even from the other side. Simply put, this makes getting at the contents of the powered cooler easier than ever. In case you’re wondering, it has a 44.4-quart capacity, which is enough to fit around 62 standard 12-ounce beverage cans.
Like other portable fridges, it has a built-in compressor that enable the active chilling, with the ability to set the temperature between 0 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That means, you can’t just chill stuff in here, you can absolutely freeze them, allowing you to use it to carry pretty much any type of food or drink. It uses the outfit’s Advanced VIP Insulation, by the way, which utilizes 2.8-inch thick insulation layers to keep the cold locked in and minimize the power consumption.
The Iceco VL45 Plus comes with controls right on the device, complete with a small display, so you can see what temperature it’s currently set at. However, it also comes with a mobile app and a CarPlay app that you can use to make adjustments if you’re driving and suddenly remembered you need it to be stark cold to keep the tub of ice cream you just put inside frozen.
Like other portable fridges, it’s designed to plug onto the vehicle’s 12V outlet for power, although you can also connect it to a battery if you want to take it out to camp. They’re selling a 17,400 mAh battery pack specifically for that, by the way, which, the outfit claims, can power it for up to eight hours at the 32-degree Fahrenheit setting. The battery, by the way, is designed to snap magnetically to the side of the cooler.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Iceco VL45 Plus. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $749.
