- This is the Engel Eclipse MD40F portable fridge freezer
It's an entry level option that gives you
all the reliability that Engel delivers.
I'm going to tell you all about it.
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today with the Engel Eclipse MD40F fridge freezer.
This is an entry level fridge in Engel's range.
It allows you to get all the reliability
that Engel's always delivered at a lesser price
and they've done that by stripping a few features out of it.
I'm going to run through all those features for you shortly.
Firstly, when you buy a fridge,
obviously you get the fridge with it
and you get to your owner's manual
there are replaceable 10 amp fuse
and an adapter for the plug in a European vehicle.
Now this only comes with a 12 volt cable going a cable
so we'll go into a bit more details on this shortly,
but it only runs off of 12 or 24 volts.
It has about three metres of cable there
and it's got Engel's thermal fuse in the end here as well
so you can replace the fuse if you like.
Now getting into the details of the fridges,
so for another whole unit weighs about 22 kilos
and if we're talking about dimensions first up length wise,
without the handles on the ends,
these handles are removable,
so if we take the measurement from here to here,
it's about 63.6 centimetres in length,
and if you add the handles onto that as well,
it comes out to about 77, 78 centimetres,
less 77.6 centimetres from this edge here
to the same edge at the other end.
Width wise under here, about 36.6 centimetres,
but if you take the measurements that
are from the edge of the latch here to the very far edge,
it's about 40 centimetres or just under 40 centimetres
and in terms of height, about 48.3 centimetres
from the very base here up to the top.
The other case is all made of
a flexible and durable polypropylene material.
so both the lead and the size is got a
slightly different fields, but it's all polypropylene.
The handles as well are plastic, they're easily removable,
they've got Phillips head screws in here,
so you can easily take them off if you don't want them on,
but they don't fall down they're rigid handles
and the corners have got these sort of rubbery bumpers
on them just for a bit of protection,
when it's in the back of the car.
The insulation on the side is a polyurethane insulation.
The walls are about three and a half centimetres thick
so it's a good, still nice thick wall there
so it's going to provide good insulation.
Jumping onto the details at this end of the fridge here,
cause we've got both the control panel
and the power at this end.
We'll start with a power down the bottom here.
Now, as I mentioned, one way to drop or reduce the price
of these fridges is to drop the 240 volt compatibility
so this has now only got a 12 volt plug
to take the 12 volt cable here.
That doesn't mean you can't run it from 240 volts
because you can pick up a transformer similar
to this one here, that's attached to the fridge next to us,
that plugs into 240 volt and
then that will then plug into this here.
You're probably looking at around
about the 100 dollar amount for one of those
so even if you would add that onto this fridge,
the price is still going to come in considerably under
the next step up in the Engel range.
So you did get a little blade fuse in up here at 10 amp
blade fuse, easy to replace
and to get a replacement as well.
Let's talk about the compressor,
shortly we'll go to the control panel
at the top here first.
Now this is where Engel really stripped down a lot of
features so you just get what you need.
It's just an on, off switch with a dial
there to control the temperature.
You don't get a read out of the temperature,
you don't get settings, battery cutout settings
or anything like that, you just get an on, off switch.
Now I might just grab the power adapter
next to this fridge and plug it in to show
that there is at least a little light that comes on
when you turn this on to know that it's running,
so this is around to the offside here,
if I flick that on,
you can see the green light comes on there.
It's just a cool setting there so there's
probably anywhere from five to 10 degrees inside.
If you dial it around a little bit further
to the one at the top here, that's around
about five degrees.
This is inaccurate, it's an approximation
of about five degrees,
and then as you go around,
anywhere from one through to about four
gets you up to around about minus 12 degrees
and then right around a five will give you minus 15 or more.
Now it does have potential cooling capacity
down to minus side saying, but that's
obviously very dependent on the ambient temperature.
Then to switch it off again, you just dial it
back around and turn it off.
So very basic operation, it's just an on off mode.
Now in terms of the compressor that you get inside,
the MR40F here is the same cell fridges swing motor
that Engel uses in all of their fridges.
It's only got one moving part.
They've been ticking along in the back of
four drawers fridge, caravans and trucks for
many many years of providing reliable refrigeration.
So you're getting that same reliability in this fridge,
as you would, any Engel fridge that dropped
to about 2.75 or some say 2.8 amps at 12 volts,
about 1.6 amps at 24 volts and they
never draw more than that,
so if the compressor was to run flat out all the time,
it would never draw more than about 2.75,2.8 amps.
Now, in terms of the features that are missing from this,
if you were to, if you wanted to run this from 240 volt,
you can add one of these transformers in with it,
and if you did want a temperature dial,
you can pick up little wireless or wired temperature dials
for probably maybe 30 to 50 dollars.
So let's say you're gonna add an extra 150 dollars
to the price of this fridge here.
The temperature gauge that you bought
will actually be better than a lot of the built in ones
because it measures ambient temperature and
inside temperature and it can be wireless,
so you can put it in front of your car
so you're getting some beneficial features.
So you could add that to this fridge
and still pay less than some of the higher end fridges
if that's the path you want to go down,
but you don't get the battery protection features
in this one that you do in the others.
Just the last few things on the outside,
a little bit of a walk around.
There's nothing on the back here,
you can see that's just a plain side of the fridge
and the same with the other sides here,
nothing on the front and the same here
just applying into the fridge there.
I do just want to talk about some
of the features of the lid though.
We'll start with the latches here,
so that they're plastic latches,
they're not really heavy duty,
but they certainly do the job.
They operate nice and easily, just lift them up,
and this little lip latches over the metal lip there,
that's on both sides.
The lead lifts up, and you can actually reverse
the circuit under these screws here.
You can swap this one around with
the screws on this side here,
and you can have the lid swing the other way.
So we've always got the cord
and the control panel at this end of the fridge here
so if your vehicle configuration suits better
to have this lid opening this way,
it's easily done with a Phillips head screwdriver
and just switching them around.
There's a little stay on the side here,
a little nylon cord that just loops into a plastic loop here
and down in the bottom now insert an anchored point
inside the case there just to stop the lid
from opening too far.
If that does wear out easily replaced,
cause it's just a nylon cord.
Now in terms of space inside the fridge here,
it does have a removable basket here
and the cooling units that run around the side here,
so the usable space inside of these cooling units
is about 38.6 centimetres from end to end here,
about 26.6 centimetres from side to side here,
and you've got about 36 centimetres of height
to this edge here.
So in terms of all of those measurements,
you do need to take a little bit off to allow for this
basket space here, so if you are tight for space
just take maybe another one to one and a half centimetres
off of those measurements and you do also have a little bit
of extra height with this sort of cutout in the lid here,
which gives you about an extra three centimetres of height.
So if you have bottles sitting down this side,
they can stick up a little bit further over here.
Total space inside here is about 38 litres equivalent of
about 50 cans, 50 375 mil cans with regards to putting a
bottle in here.
We've got some Snowys quiver here, heaps of space,
so that sits in there with space above it,
plus that extra three centimetres.
So you could actually stick a bottle on top,
probably would've put it on top of your eggs,
but a few blocks of cheese and that sort of thing,
and you've got plenty of depth there for even a taller
Riesling bottle is going to fit in there.
There's no light inside of the fridge here, and
that's another feature that's been left out of this fridge
to keep that price down nice and low.
We are on the end here, just outside of the seal,
that sort of traps all the cool air and is a little compiler
that you might sort of mistake is a like a
butter compartment or something that you would have
in your fridge at home, and there's no actual
insulation between this and the compressor below.
There's a bit of a vent here, but this is just plastic.
So it's not going to keep anything cool, it's probably
actually maybe going to be slightly warm,
so I use that for storage of maybe cheese knives or some
crackers, or just some stuff that doesn't need to be cold in
under there. That's most of the features of the MD40F
Eclipse fridge freezer from Engel.
Big differences between this and most of the other models,
and also its previous version is that it now no longer runs
on 240 volts and it doesn't have all of the controls and
stuff on that control panel there. But if you were to add a
240 volts adapter and that little temperature gauge that I
referred to earlier you're still going to get a really
reliable fridge for less than the price of some of the
high end fridges, so if you're not after all the bells and
whistles, this is probably a really good option,
especially for occasional users.
You can grab these online at snowys.com.au at our
lowest prices every day.
If you got any questions, let us know down in the
comments below, subscribe to my channel, I'll send you all
the latest information.
We'll check out some other fridge videos
like this one down here.
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