Dometic CFX5 45 Electric Cooler

The CFX5 45 is for people who car camp or overland often enough that the fridge becomes part of the vehicle: long weekends, a week on public land, a road trip where the cooler rides along for days. Dometic rates it at 46 liters, which is room for two or three people's food and drinks for a long weekend, and it is small enough to sit behind the seats of a midsize SUV.

It is the best overall pick on our list of the best 12V portable fridges. It earns that on efficiency and temperature control, not features. If you run it from a portable power station, the low draw means a smaller station goes further, and that is where part of the higher price comes back.

Efficiency. In OutdoorGearLab's testing the CFX5 45 averaged 6.8 W once it reached temperature and used 41 Wh over six hours. Its peak was 58.2 W while it was pulling down. Over a day at room temperature that works out to roughly 165 Wh, or about 14 amp-hours at 12 V. Dometic's own figure is set in harder conditions: 1.05 Ah per hour with 90°F outside and 39°F inside, or about 25 Ah (300 Wh) a day. Either way, it uses far less than the 600 Wh a day that our power-station sizing guide plans for a generic 12 V cooler.

The insulation explains most of that. The CFX5 series is Dometic's first to use vacuum insulated panels, which GearJunkie reported when the line launched in October 2024. The panels slow heat transfer with thinner walls than foam alone. A variable-speed compressor (Dometic calls it VMSO 3.5) throttles down as the box gets close to its set point instead of cycling hard on and off.

Temperature control. Set to 35°F, the interior held 34.7°F in OutdoorGearLab's test, a 0.3°F miss. That precision matters when you keep meat for several days or run the box as a freezer. At the minimum setting it reached -2.2°F from a 75°F start, against a rated floor of -7°F. Warm cans reached the mid-30s in about half an hour.

The details you use every day. The 3-stage battery protection shuts the fridge off before it drains a starter battery. The Bluetooth app shows temperature and energy use and warns when the lid is left open. The color display, the 18 W QC 3.0 USB port, the interior LED light, the drain plug and the removable wire dividers make it easy to live with. It runs on 12 or 24 V DC or 100-240 V AC, so the same box works in the car, on a power station and in a kitchen the night before a trip.

The latch. OutdoorGearLab found that the lid needs attention to close fully. GearJunkie noted the same thing on the CFX5 55, saying a complete close takes care. A lid left slightly open wastes the efficiency you paid for, so the app's lid alert is worth switching on.

One zone. Like every single-zone fridge, it runs as a refrigerator or as a freezer, not both. If you want frozen meat and cold drinks in the same box, look at a dual-zone model.

Price and weight. It costs much more than budget compressor fridges of similar size. Dometic lists it at 40.3 lb empty (OutdoorGearLab weighed 36.2 lb), and it has aluminum handles but no wheels. Full, it is a two-person lift into a tall vehicle.

The Dometic CFX5 55IM is the same platform in a 55-liter box with an ice maker. It is the one to buy if you camp as a family or hate buying ice for drinks, but Dometic rates it at 1.55 Ah per hour in the same heat, about half again as much as the 45.

The Anker SOLIX EverFrost 2 58L brings two zones and its own 288 Wh battery, at 63.7 lb. A CFX5 45 plus an EcoFlow RIVER 3 Plus weighs about the same as that one box. The RIVER runs the fridge from its 12 V socket and also charges phones and a laptop. That pairing makes more sense if you already own a station or want one for other jobs.

The BougeRV CR22 is less than half the weight and a fraction of the cost, but it holds about half as much and drew more power in OutdoorGearLab's test (8.3 W against 6.8 W).

Buy the CFX5 45 if you camp often, want a fridge that holds its set point and want your battery or power station to last as long as possible. Skip it if you need a separate freezer zone or you only camp a few times a year. For most car campers who plan to keep a fridge for years, it is the one to get.