Why The 12volt RV Fridge is Amazing! RV Fridge Comparison.

Thank you for the information. I live in a home with an HOA. I can park a class c or small travel trailer on my driveway for only one day before I hit the road. How long does getting a 12-volt fridge cold enough to store food take?

Your comparison is a joke. Your 12v fridge looks to be 10.1 CF. While your residential looks to be twice that size. The RV Fridge is nearly twice the size. To be fair why not compare a 120v Magic Chef 10.1 CF to the 12v?

Our Samsung residential has totally sucked (unreliable) since day one! Never buy any trailer with a Samsung refrigerator in it!

I have a 12V everchill in my brand new camper that’s gone out twice in 4 months. Cheap little Chinese compressor keeps burning out.

Now that I’ve watched further into the video “I replaced the compressor board”

So to go along with my last post. 12V fridges will not last you an entire year if you live or travel often in a camper. If you take your camper out twice a year. You may be ok. 12v is one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made buying in a camper

For people who boondock even for a short while are going to be extremely disappointed by the new 12v frigs. This guy did not explain this fact very well. Believe me it will cost you between 2k and 4k in $$$$$ just to buy quality batteries and solar panels just to perform like the old true gas/elec absorption frigs did. Demand that all the mnfgrs still maintain a choice when buy a RV.

Why would you run a 2 way gas absorption fridge off a inverter. It uses less than 4 amps running on lp and battery

I need a large fridge for my off grid cabin and I have always used propane up here in the mountains. I do hate the sound of the compressors in conventional 110 volt house fridges and could never use one in my Cabin. How is the noise output on these 12 volt fridges?

I have a mine freezer, made by Idea from Costco now and I am amazed at how quiet it is and how little power it consumes. Are these 12 volt fridges quiet and highly efficient like my small chest freezer?

I just learned about the split system heating and cooling for my cabin as well and it appears there is new technology which is quiet and highly efficient! Is this the case wit these new 12 volt fridges?

12v fridge works really good, had so much problems with regular rv fridge.

Interesting video. Unfortunately some brands no longer offer propane as an option. I do wish they’d at least leave the framing in the wall and designate where vents could be installed (like they might mark a hard point to install a bedroom TV). I pretty much boondock exclusively, and I hate to run a generator…. I like to run enough battery for several days with no sun (parked under forest, bad weather , or whatever) and enough solar to meet my use while recharging the batteries in a day or two. The additional battery and solar to do this with a compressor fridge would be significantly expensive.

After going from our absorption fridge on our 278bh, to our 12vdc on our 324mbs, we are happy with the 12vdc fridge.

I have a lot of experience using absorption refrigerators and and some recent experience with DC compressor fridges, primarily through using large cooler style refrigerator/freezers. If the upright DC fridge works like my coolers, I think an advantage you overlooked is that you don't have to "pre-chill" everything before it goes in, as you do with the propane fridge. You mentioned that it takes awhile (8 hrs) to cool the propane one before you load it, but you also have to load it with food that is cold to start with. The ones I've had would take DAYS to cool foods from anything close to room temp. If you tried that with certain foods I'm sure they would spoil before they got down to a safe temp. DC compressor fridges, based on my limited experience with large car coolers, work every bit as well as if you were putting stuff in your kitchen fridge. I made 31 lbs of ice from tap water in less than 24 hrs recently with one of my coolers. I know that I couldn't do that with any absorption fridge that I've owned.
You're a lucky puppy to have gotten that fridge for free. Good job! Now use it.

We’ve had our 12v compressor fridge in our new RV for about 8 months now and can say without reservation that we would never go back to an absorption unit. The 12v refrigerator is better in every way. It takes only 20 minutes to get down to temp and is unaffected by outside ambient temperatures. Admittedly we have lithium batts and 400w of solar on our roof, but with that we can boondock for days and have a cold fridge—and frozen food in the freezer. In mind mind, there isn’t even a debate anymore.

I have a magic chef fridge/freezer combo 3.1 cf 120v …… because I couldn’t find a 12 v fridge freezer combo same size …. Any suggestions

I am surprised at alot of people saying they have trouble with absorption fridges staying cool enough? Ours works great and just turn it on the night before we leave and it is always cold by morning we leave also stays very cold and freezer keeps the ice cream frozen 😀

I think we missed a lot of negatives for the absorption fridge, just in the fact it takes forever to change the temperature. Then if you put anything into it that’s not cold it can take it day, days to get back to temperature. Just seems like a complete waste

I'll stick with my 30 day run-time absorption refer. It's so costly to have the solar and battery capacity to make a compressor refer viable.

Your beautiful 3way Norcold is in a slide, probably uses an extra cooling/venting fan as a result. My Norcold not in slide will run over 2 weeks in hot summer on a 20lb propane tank with negligible 12 required. There's no comparison, period. Propane should not go away

As a Commercial/Industrial HVACR Contractor I got the 12V in my 2023. Love it. Have you looked into the upcoming 12V A/C units?

Interesting, our mh has a 18cu ft Samsung. I put a amphour meter on the outlet for 24 hours. It used 75 ah with the ext. temp being 78 daytime and 53 at night. The Xantrex inverter claims 90% efficiency, so used approx. 85 to 86 ah. I think I like my rv fridge.
Other items to consider are if swapping would be, cost, size, and is the 12v wiring existing large enough to supply the new fridge.
If I was in need of a new unit, I might look at the 12 volt. For now, even with extensive boondocking, the DW and are are happy with the residential unit.

Great comparison info. I have been repairing R V s for 45 years. most of my customers camp with hook ups. So, power draw is not an issue. Customer that have toy Box R Vs camp with no hook ups, so absorption refrigerators are the way to go. Norcold refrigerators on # 9 setting will freeze milk in the lower compartment. and i have seen the freezer at 0 degrees in 24 hours of running. If solar panels are installed, then 12 volt refrigerators are fine . Plus running the generator for about 1-2 hours a day is going to override the battery loss from the 12 volt Refer.

What is the name of the 12 volt refrigerator.

All you have to do is look inside each one and then you'll know which one is better. Those absorption fridges have alot less interior space because of all the equipment it has to have on the back side. I replaced mine with a residential that was less cubic feet but theres alot more room inside it to put things. My old freezer couldn't even fit a frozen pizza inside it (unless I took it out of the box) the new one could easily fit 2-3 boxes

I mostly boondock and I have a 12v fridge. I can charge my 200AH battery in a couple of hours using a small generator, and that is enough charge to keep the fridge going for two or three days.

What is that monitor that you have on the upper left of your absorption fridge motherboard?? An extra protection module?

I don't know if it is the state of the market for all refrigerators, but I have heard from so many friends that they ran into a problem with their 12v fridge within the first few months of ownership.

Very disappointed with the 12 volt fridges drains the battery’s every single night nothing else running
We are in the mountains very cool at night
Settings at minimum fridge is cold freezer is frozen? O2 censor goes off 2:30 am every single night low battery
4 years dealing with this problem up graded batteries and solar every night night o2 censor low battery give me the gas!!!!!

"it was broken"...

I had to google boondocking! Never heard it called that

Ours uses 650watts every hour 7/24!

IT's important for people to understand it's: (110Vac) or (12Vdc+Propane)

12 volts don’t work. Look at the web sites. Everyone having problems. Tell the truth. Don’t buy.

Absorption = $1/Day or More!!!

You also need to account for running an absorption fridge in the driveway. We left ours on between trips and our electric bill spiked, after looking at the daily reports from our electric bill we narrowed it down to the fridge. Our Dometic cost us over $1 per day to run on shore power, My whole house runs just under $3 per day normally. Crazy!

Just bought a Bluetti ac180 and I would LOVE to figure out how to run just the fridge during the day. We have that exact fridge. 🤔

Great video , but in my experience I had an awful time with my 12v fridge bought my 2024 travel trailer last year gave out in about 3 months ended up in the shop for 6 months. It wasn’t until I called a mechanic and saved me time and money stating that 12volts are fairly new to the RV so not much knowledge is know switched over to a residential fridge and has been great since

Do they make humming or fan noises ? I like it completely quiet, thanks

Thanks for making this video

My last rig had a 12v. I fell in love With it. The sales guy told me it would run off the truck supplied power while driving. So essentially it wouldn't use any stored battery power while driving. It seems that may not be the case??? Now that doesn't really matter as long as the batteries are good but im just a weekender so the batteries tend to fall off since they don't get cycled regularly. Thoughts???

Thanks Jerad I bought a rv that had a 2 way fridge and the dealership put a 12 volt fridge in because that’s what I was looking for and it was there word that I bought it but they put the fridge in the rv at there cost but didn’t close the vents so I notice it wasn’t cooling the bottom part as well as the last 12 volt fridge we had in our last rv thanks for the info on the vents, the dealership didn’t seal up the vents I’m wondering if it is bad ?

I wish you would equate watt hours to something more tangible for us who are not solar geeks. Like how long a 110 amp deep cycle battery will power the 12 volt model or how long a 100 amp Lifepo4 will run it. Anyway thanks for the info DS

Did you ever change your Absorption and a 12-volt compressor Fridge? I am having problems running on propane with my 20-year refrigerator, works great on ac or on the generstor.

Residential refrigerator are great if you have the room, like in a 5th wheel. Otherwise 12V refrigerators are the way to go, but are more expensive. Everything in a RV is intended to work together, so when replacing appliances like this there are some caveats. If you're always plugging in to shore power there's no power issue, but to make it work when boondocking you also need lithium battery(s) and solar panels so you don't drain your battery. If you have a motorhome you can also us a DC-DC charger from the vehicle's alternator to charge the battery. As a bonus, a lithium battery allows you to install an inverter to power other AC appliances like a microwave.

The absorption refrigerator in my old camper would run for more that a week on 20 pounds of propane. The 12 volt refrigerator in my new camper won't run overnight on battery power.

12v fridge croaked at 2&1/2 years old and cost a redonculous amount to replace. Got a new camper with absorption dual setup again. Sorry but bad experience with 12v fridge tainted my opinion

I have a Norcold 12volt we love it !

If they made a 12 v that could also use propane I would be interested but until then NO because we have been in situations where there was not enough sun. We boondock 99.9 percent of the time.

I would like to see how it works if a very heavy fog rolls in and stays for a week. Or rain and thunder storms for five or more days. Real life stuff that happens, been through both, our solar did not do well thank God for propane

I will be boondocking some and living full time plugged into 110 volt in my travel trailer. Would a 12 volt fridge be a poor choice for a boondocker? I would save money on propane and spend more watt hours with a 12 volt fridge. 12 volt vs 3 way .... What would be the better choice? Get a larger battery bank / solar panel and go 12 volt? I have yet to purchase my trailer and one has a 12 volt fridge and the other has a 3 way fridge.

How do you know compressor board down? My is not cooling, is the same problem?


What does conpressor board do?