Review of Andes Large 24L Coolbox & Warm Heater

This is a review of a 24L Cool box and food warmer, it can be plugged in to a UK socket and a 12V car cigarette lighter. It’s extra functionality of warming up as well as cooling make this an amazing product if you are after something that does both.

This Andes Large box is 24L in size, so the 3rd largest we have reviewed and has both a cooling and warming feature inbuilt. It comes with both a car adapter (12v) plug and a UK 3 pin wall socket. This is another great feature, as with this, you can have it plugged in at home to cool down or warm up in preparation for putting food items or other things in to the box.

Where this electric car fridge differs is that it cools down the internal space to 15c below that of its surrounding ambient temperature. Unlike others we have looked at, this one will take the food and cool it own to 3c inside the cool box if the outside air temperature is 18c. Others promise temperatures of 8c, 12c, lower etc but this one runs from the ambient outside temperature and cools down that. This probably makes it easier to keep cool as if it was hot outside it doesn’t have to work extra hard to get it down to a certain temp, but this does mean if it was 25c outside, it will only get the box down to 10c, which will still keep food fresh.

Inside you can see like others, the top lid of the box acts as the fridge and cools down the insides when it is sealed, plugged in and turned on. This means you lose a little bit of space in the top but not too much, 24L is still plenty for an electric cool box and should keep a small family good for a few days.

Now if you are wanting to keep food warm because you are making meals and sending them to a party or event for the evening in your car, this would be perfect for it as well. You can probably get over 20 style indian/chinese flat plastic boxes in there stacked on top of each other and this car food warmer will keep all the food at a great 65c.

Unlike the Vonshef which only fits in 1.5L bottles, this 24L electric cool box and warm box will fit two 2L bottles next to each other in an upright position on one side. You can see the space at the top where the electric parts stick out have a gap for these when the lid closes and seals.

The whole thing is made of ABS plastic like the Vonshef and has a carry handle which feels sturdy and good for carrying the 12v car fridge to wherever you need it. Although, when carrying it, it is a heavy object, without anything in it it weights 5KG, so again, we’d recommend a trolley if you were to use a couple of these in your car or are older and would struggle with the weight of it with food and drinks in it.

Another nice feature from this electric cool box is the partition shelf which you can fit in a number of different ways to organise your food and stop it from all getting mixed up or items falling over, especially if they have liquids in them.

Plugging the box in to the car cigarette lighter using the DC power supply will give you continuuous cold air in to your cool box. Just select cold > DC and place the box wherever you can fit it in to your car. This electric cool box was too big for our front passenger seat foot well so we put it behind the passenger car seat in the rear foot wells of the rear seats. I’m 6’1″ tall and my seat is quite far back and with the limited leg room we had to move our passenger seat slightly forward to fit it in, but once there we had cold drinks and food which would last an entire journey being kept cold and were very happy with it.

Being bigger we thought it would be louder but actually it wasn’t, this was another little thing we were happy with, we have been pleasantly surprised by this little car gadget.

We are really impressed with this option, big enough for mot day/multi-day trips in a car and if you’re car is really big you can fit it to your side next to your feet at the front foot well.

It can keep food warm as well as keeping it cool, it runs off ambient temperature though, so if you use it on very hot days, it will only reduce the heat inside by 15c but this is good enough for us and what we used it for, nothing needed to be frozen or near frozen, just kept cold so a drink was nice or the food didn’t go off for that day.

It’s not a bad price and is a quiet device considering it’s size and weight.