TESTED: Dometic CFX3 45

At the 2019 SEMA show, Dometic released their CFX3 line of electric coolers, which are the latest generation of the CFX series that I’ve reviewed in the past HERE.  Everything from the compressor to the control app was updated for this complete product line refresh, and after spending some time checking out the new coolers at the show, I left Dometic’s booth eager to put one to the test in the real world.  We all know that seeing something at an industry show is one thing, and spending months with that same product while traveling thousands of miles off-road in the real world is another – so rather than create just one more short term review of a product, I figured I would push this one out to over a year of use – to see just what living with the CFX3 is like well after the honeymoon phase of ownership.

At first glance, a CFX3 electric cooler may look similar to the old CFX series, but look closer and you’ll begin to see just how much has changed.  Construction wise, everything from the handles to the compressor unit to the controls have been revised.  The handles are now all aluminum, so there’s no need to worry about cracking a handle if something smashes into the cooler or if your buddy goes full hulk mode using a ratchet strap around a handle to secure the cooler in your vehicle.  We can’t see the compressor unit, but know that it’s an entirely new unit that is more efficient, consumes less power, and creates less noise than it’s predecessor.  This means that the CFX3 coolers are easier on your battery system when you’re parked, and they’re even easier to sleep near.  Dometic has also moved the compressor to the opposite end of the cooler from the lid opening, so now when you open the lid the deep end is closest to you.

On the control side of things, the CFX3 series steps into the modern age with a high resolution display that is a welcome change over the old LCD display on the older coolers.  No longer will you have to reference your manual to remember how to make a settings change, or figure out what the display is trying to tell you.  With the CFX3 display you can clearly read, adjust, and understand all of the settings with just a few button presses.  The whole process is very intuitive, and folks who have never seen the manual can make any adjustment needed without issue.  When the display isn’t in use, a little snowflake icon on the display lets you know the unit is powered up, so parasitic draw is less than the bright LEDs used by other brands of coolers.  Next to the display, you’ll also find a USB port that’s been upgraded to provide 2 Amps of power at 5V, which is a welcome upgrade over the 500 milli-amp outlet on the old CFX units.  This increase in current means that the CFX3 can actually charge modern power-hungry devices, and the port is in a great location to power a speaker or other device while you’re in camp.

Speaking of devices, Dometic has also improved the companion app for the CFX3 series. The app uses a Bluetooth connection that sips power, and now you can plot your cooler’s energy consumption in addition to fully controlling the cooler from your phone.  In use, I’ve noticed absolutely no hiccups using the app on Android devices, and being able to know how much power your cooler is currently consuming and how much power it has been consuming is powerful information when it coming to determining just how long you can go before needing to charge your battery system.  The CFX3 series coolers do come with a configurable low voltage cutoff, so you can protect your battery system from over discharging.  As they say knowledge is power, and it’s super easy to pop open the app and see where your battery system is at, rather than having to guess at your state of charge. 

Inside the CFX3 45, things will start to look like familiar Dometic territory, and it’s here where you’ll find the versatile system of baskets and dividers that allow you to organize your cooler loadout.  There is a basket for the shallow section of the cooler, and a basket for the deep section that be divided in half vertically with a removable insert.  Volume wise, the CFX3 45 measures in at 46 liters of storage, and this works out to a deep basket that can hold 16 sleeved standard size soda cans per layer with ease.  Drive off-road long enough and the simple action of cans rubbing against each other as you bounce down a trail can wear a hole in an aluminum can.  Pro tip: This is why you can never have too many foam beer koozies.  Should a can have a hole worn in it, or something else in your cooler decide to leak, there’s still a drain plug that’s easy to use at the bottom of the cooler.

Getting in and out of the CFX3 45 is where I noticed about the only issue that I’ve been able to find in my extended time with the cooler.  That issue is that the lid doesn’t always latch unless you give it a firm press to close it.  I would like the lid to work like a car door, in the respect that it’s easy to close and that it seals well, yet with the CFX3 lid, even dropping it closed isn’t enough to do the trick.  The best practice is to gently close the lid and then give it a press to engage the latch.  This is by no means a deal breaker, but I’ve seen other CFX3 coolers suffer the same ailment, and there may have been one case where a cooler in the back of a truck was closed but not latched, and spirited driving resulted in lunch being put out early – but the point is, just check that the lid is latched and you’re good to go.  Other than the lid, every CFX3 cooler I’ve encountered in the wild has worked flawlessly.

The 100 year old hotel and the 100 day old CFX3 45.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself that yeah, an electric cooler would be rad, but that’s a lot of money to spend on a camping gadget – remember this:  Dometic also provides an AC power adapter so that you can run your cooler when you’re at home or anywhere else you have access to AC power.  This means that your electric cooler can pull double duty and be of value at home and on the road.  Need a drink cooler in the shop?  Need a place to store additional food so that you don’t have to go to the grocery store as often?  Staying in a hotel for long term work? Don’t think of an electric cooler as a camping only tool – they are devices which can provide value every day of the year, or whenever you need them. 

In a nod to Dometic’s longevity, one of our American Adventurist staff has been running the same Dometic electric cooler for more than seven years now, and thanks to the solar panel on his roof, it’s been on 24/7.

The CFX3 45 Cooler that I’ve been testing for the last year hasn’t been phased by anything that I’ve thrown at it.  To give you a quick idea of what It’s been through, the cooler has:  Frozen in the winter in Idaho, baked in a hot car in the middle of summer in Phoenix, and logged nearly 35,000 miles of travel.  Several thousand of these miles were off-road, doing everything from Go-Fast Dirt to rock-donkey rock crawling.  The cooler may or may not have logged a little bit of flight time, and it’s spent plenty of time packed next to everything from other pelican boxes to recovery gear while bouncing around all over the Western US.  It may have a few scuffs and scrapes and dust that will never come out, but the unit works just as well as it did on day one.

The Dometic CFX3 45 has been an awesome electric cooler.  I have to give Dometic props for looking at their old CFX series of coolers (which are solid units) and figuring out how to make them better.  With the CFX3, the compressor is more efficient and quiet.  The user interface is so much easier to use.  And other little details like the revised USB port all add up to make a cooler that has been a joy to use.  The bottom line is this:  If you want an electric cooler that you just plug in and know that it’s going to work, you can’t go wrong with a CFX3.  No matter where your adventure is going to take you, know that the CFX3 will stand up to what you throw at it, and keep everything you throw in it cool.  When the road finally sees you back home, know that an electric cooler can be utilized around the house – so don’t think that an electric cooler is a travel-only toy.  Electric coolers have never been easier to use, or more useful – so if you’ve been on the fence about ditching ice, know that with a CFX3 cooler you’ll never look back.

Full Disclosure: Dometic provided a sample CFX3 45 electric cooler free of charge to the author for the purposes of this review.

TESTED: Dometic PLB 40

Editor’s Note:  This article was updated on 2/10/2020 to include cold weather testing, as requested by our members.  Find it below.  -Chad

Dometic’s PLB 40 is a truly plug and play portable battery solution that allows anyone to have a dual battery system in any vehicle.  That’s right – no custom wiring or additional purchases required.  As long as you have a 12V outlet in your rig that can supply 100W, you can plug in the PLB 40 and enjoy an additional 40 Amp-Hours of power that can be used to power whatever you want.  This means that you can power 12 V cigarette-style devices like an electric cooler, your USB devices, and two-pin 12V appliances without pulling from your vehicle’s starting battery.

Dometic certainly isn’t the first company to make a portable battery, but the ease of use and a few electric cooler-specific optimizations to the PLB 40 make it a great choice for folks who want to be able to use their electric coolers in just about any vehicle, or have a versatile supply of power in anywhere they may need it.

The number one reason I hear from folks against getting an electric cooler is that they don’t want to have to deal with wiring in a second battery or a adding a dedicated circuit for their electric cooler.  While a second battery certainly isn’t required to run an electric cooler in a vehicle, having a constant supply of power is.  Since most vehicles have all of their 12V circuits switched by the ignition (for obvious reasons), adding a non-switched circuit has been the minimum effort required to keep an electric cooler powered up when your vehicle is not running.  A switched circuit, a quality battery, and utilizing the low voltage cutoff on your electric cooler will work, but you’re still limited in how long you can stay out by the capacity of your starting battery.  Yet, by adding a PLB 40 to your system, you don’t have to touch your vehicle’s wiring, and you’re able to add a considerable power reserve.

Literally all it takes to use the PLB 40 to power an electric cooler is to plug it into a 12V outlet on the vehicle and to plug your electric cooler into to the PLB40.  The end.

It’s really that simple.  While the vehicle is on, the PLB 40 charges up, and once the vehicle is parked, the PLB 40 becomes the power supply for your cooler and anything else you want to plug in, leaving your vehicle’s starting battery topped off.  The PLB 40 means that you can run an electric cooler in any vehicle that has a 12V outlet, so whether you’re traveling in your buddy’s rig, or even a rental car, the PLB 40 lets you bring all of the benefits of an electric cooler into any car with a 12 V outlet.  Want to use your fridge in the wife’s car for a grocery run on a hot day? Add a PLB 40 and you’re all set.  No need to worry about groceries spoiling in the back of a hot car while you’re running errands.

If you’re wondering how long 40 Amp Hours lasts, the answer is – it depends.  The size of your electric cooler, how efficient it is, how hot the environment is, and how much you’re getting into your cooler, and what you’re putting into your cooler are all things that will impact the runtime you’ll see from the PLB 40.  Dometic advertises 40 hours of runtime when powering a CFX 40 electric cooler for a baseline reference.  I’ve been running my PLB 40 with my CFX 75 DZW and as you would expect that with nearly twice the volume of the CFX 40, my runtimes are considerably shorter.  I’m also typically running one compartment as a freezer, which requires even more power than a refrigerator temperature setting.

All that being said, PLB 40 is able to keep my Dometic CFX 75 powered up without being replenished for at least 24 hours.  If you know the average draw of whatever you want to power, doing the Amp-Hour math is pretty easy, just divide 40 Ah by your total draw.  If I’m going to be in the same place for longer, I’ll plug in a solar panel to the back of the PLB 40 using the Anderson SB 50 port, or I’ll plug the PLB 40 into an always energized 12v outlet in one of my trucks.  The PLB 40 also accepts AC charging, so if your destination for the night is a hotel or someplace with grid power, you can charge the battery from a 120V source so it’s ready to go in the morning.

The charge controller on the PLB 40 will continue to accept DC input all the way down to 8 VDC, so if you have your PLB 40 drawing from your rig’s starting battery through an always-energized circuit, make sure that you’re keeping an eye on your starting battery’s voltage.  Depending on how large your vehicle’s starting battery is, pulling 30 + Ah from it could make quite a dent in your starting battery, and it’s ability to crank your rig over.   Having a jump start battery with you is also always a good call.  Dometic has this 8 VDC cutoff in place to allow for solar charging the Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery in the PLB 40.  This LiFePO4 battery has a couple of advantages over other types of Lithium batteries found in other portable batteries, namely an increased lifespan and the chemistry is more stable (safe) than other lithium designs.  Being powered by a lithium battery also means that the PLB 40 is lightweight, and very portable.

The PLB 40 is so easy to move around thanks to its beefy top handle, that you’ll find yourself using it all the time, and you’ll never have to convince yourself to go lug your battery around.   Tipping the scales to just past 16 pounds, the PLB can easily be moved anywhere it’s needed by almost anyone.  Not only it is lightweight, but it has a small footprint that’s less than eight inches on a side, so it can be stashed in all kinds of places where power is needed.

This size and weight opens doors for how this thing can be used.  No power outlets in reach of the kid’s seats in the family hauler?  Stick the PLB with the kids, and let them run their devices for the entire duration of your drive (if that’s your thing).  Need power someplace in camp that’s not your rig?  Grab your PLB.  Hosting a BBQ in the backyard, and want to use your electric cooler for easy to access beverages, but don’t feel like dealing with all of the extension cords? You get the idea.  If you’ve been lugging around other battery battery boxes where you supply a car battery – you need to experience the PLB’s size and portability. It’s a game changer.

That ease of use however, does come with a price tag and the PLB 40 isn’t cheap.  Googling the PLB at the time of this writing turns up prices from $765 USD, and up.  With that money, you’re in striking distance of other solutions out there, so just make sure that you’re getting the product solution that best meets your needs.  If you’re shopping the PLB 40 against other portable batteries, Dometic has this handy chart that helps potential customers assess the return on investment of a PLB 40 vs. other popular options:

Speaking of value, it would be awesome to see Dometic offer a version of the PLB 40 that had two 12 V cigarette-style ports instead of one 12 V cigarette and one 12 V two-pin.  Or at least a two-pin to cigarette-style dongle with the current PLB 40.  If you’ve ever unscrewed the 12 V plug from your Dometic electric cooler, you’ve no doubt discovered the two-pin connector hidden inside, but I have far more 12 V cigarette style devices than two-pin devices, so it would be nice to have the added flexibility of 2 cigarette-style ports.  The one redeeming part of the 2-pin connectors is that they screw in, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally knocking your plug out.  Depending on how you pack your rig however, this may be a clutch feature or it may not make that much difference for you.  A screw in connection definitely adds piece of mind, but I have yet to knock out a 12 V cigarette style plug – and I’m probably jinxing myself by saying that.

Yet, for a plug and play, as easy as it gets, “I just want the thing to work”, you can’t go wrong with the PLB 40.  Other solutions are going to require purchasing other chargers, adjusting cut-offs, or taking other steps to get the function that the PLB 40 comes with out of the box – and it’s just so nice to just be able to plug two things in and go.

Dometic’s PLB 40 is a pretty awesome piece of technology.  Based on conversations I’ve had with other folks who’ve shelled out for one, it’s been exactly the thing that they were looking for to be able to get into the electric fridge game, and they couldn’t be happier.  It doesn’t have all of the outputs that other portable batteries have, but it’s true plug and play functionality, portability, and reliable performance make it any easy choice for folks who don’t want to touch their vehicle wiring to be able to run an electric cooler.

The PLB 40 hasn’t missed a beat in my use, which has included multiple trips to Phoenix in the middle of summer.  Even when the unit was well heat-soaked with a surface temperature that meant the unit would start to experience diminished performance, the PLB 40 didn’t slow down or indicate on it’s display that it was getting too hot.  It’s small size and weight means that you can actually take the unit to just about anywhere you need power, and the PLB 40 is flexible enough to power all kinds of DC and USB powered devices.

Cold Weather Testing:

It’s important to set the stage when it comes to talking about battery performance in cold weather.  Most folks figure that cold weather will severely impact the performance of their batteries, based on past experiences starting (or attempting to start) a vehicle in cold weather with a Lead-Acid or other common car battery chemistries.  When you attempt to start a vehicle in the cold, your vehicle’s starter needs hundreds of amps from your battery to crank a cold motor over, and at lower temperatures the chemistry of a given battery cannot provide as much current as it can when it’s warm.  This is the exact reason that there is a Cold Cranking Amps (CCA) spec on vehicle batteries.  When it comes to a high current load, you’ll absolutely notice a difference in battery performance when it’s cold out.

Powering an electric cooler in cold weather is completely different, as an electric cooler is only going to pull a couple of amps or less, no matter how cold it is outside.  Plus, the colder the outside temperature is, the lower the temperature difference is between the compartment(s) of your electric cooler and outside, which means that your cooler’s compressor is going to have to run less often to keep your electric cooler temps where you want them. This means less energy is required from your battery.  In my testing, I was able to get longer run times out of a PLB 40 with temps near freezing than I was when temps were in the 70’s, and I attribute this to the compressor running less often.

To quantify exactly what kind of difference temperature has on the PLB 40, I ran two tests.  In the first test, I used the PLB 40 at 70 degrees F, and applied a constant load of 100 watts, which I pulled through a power meter to see how many kilowatt-hours I could get out of the battery before it hit 50% state-of-charge.  I then repeated this experiment with the PLB 40 being cold-soaked and held at 32 degrees F.  The warm battery was able to provide a few hundreths of a kilowatt-hour more power before hitting 50% state-of-charge.  So yes, the the cold does impact the power output of the PLB 40, but the devices that you’re most likely powering with a PLB 40 don’t pull enough current and will require less energy when it’s cold out, so the difference will come out in the wash.

The PLB’s LiFePO4 battery will hold up to thousands of charging cycles, which means that you can have that many adventures fueled by whatever awesome stuff you can keep in your electric cooler.  If you’ve been looking for that missing link in the power supply chain for an electric cooler, or for charging media devices or drone batteries, the PLB 40 is definitely worth checking out.

Full Disclosure: Dometic provided a sample PLB 40 at no charge to the author for the purposes of this review.