- Ben from Snowys here folks. In front of me
is the Companion 75 litre Lithium
Rechargeable Fridge/Freezer. ♪ Hit it ♪
(upbeat music)
- This is an ultimately portable dual zone fridge freezer
that you can unplug completely from your vehicle
at 240 volt power source to take into a campsite
or in for a picnic.
I'll start off on all the boring bits side.
This guy weighs 30 kilos.
Lengthwise is just under a metre at 99 centimetres
and that's the very ends here.
The handles are reset recessed
so you don't need to remove them if you're tryna save space.
48 centimetres or just over 48 centimetres in depth this way
and 46 centimetres in height.
The whole fridge is made from
a durable but lightweight polypropylene.
So impact resistant, nice and tough.
It's gonna see you through many many years of use.
A bit of a tour around the outside.
Have a look at the front here.
You've got two lids on the top.
So two handles for each compartment here.
These lids are actually reversible.
I'll show you a bit more on that in a sec.
You've got a bottle opener on this side here
up in the top corner and the vent on the bottom here as well
where the compressor sits.
Quite long this fridge.
So we'll just spin it out this way.
On this end here you've got a spring loaded handle
that's recessed as I mentioned back into the body.
Your control panel at the top, go into more of that shortly.
And at this end you've got both a live Anderson port.
So there's 12 volt power at that.
And that's what you can use for solar, more on that later.
And 12 and 24 volt input.
Flick it right around to the back
not much to see other than two more handles.
So as I mentioned those lids that are reversible.
So you can open it from both sides.
Not much more to see here.
Vents at the bottom where the compressor is
and you've got a second bottle opener on this end here
so you don't have to walk
around your fridge to open your drink.
And then at this end here
is the business end in terms of power.
Up in here we've got a 42 Amp Hour lithium ion battery
which we'll go into shortly.
Compressor behind this vents here.
And you've got two more power points here.
Once again, more on that a little bit later.
Before we go in all the power and everything
I wanna show you inside the fridge.
So as I mentioned two compartments
so these lids both ways.
We could pop the lead right off if we like.
And that's the same on both sides for both compartments.
So this is reversible here. So plenty of options.
Then you've got two zones here that you can use
both as a fridge, both as a freezer
or one as a fridge, one as a freezer
and I'll show you how to make those settings later.
But in terms of dimensions inside here
these measure 31 centimetres in width
34 centimetres in depth and about 33 centimetres in height.
Maybe a little bit less because this just dips down
a little bit into the compartment there.
And the lids got a rubber seal
that runs right around the edge here.
And that teams up with just a little lip that runs around
the top of each compartment here to see the cold air inside.
Each zone has got its own removable basket.
So you do need to just take
a little bit of dimension off what I mentioned before
in terms of what you're gonna be able to fit in there.
And it does sit just in from the edge
about three or four centimetres each side here.
So you lose a little bit of space in the bottom
but each of these are removable and underneath that
is a bunk in the bottom of each compartment.
So it's nice and easy to clean these.
Just pull out so you can clean inside there
and the water drains out the bottom.
So put the basket back inside.
Now you go 75 litres capacity total
evenly divided amongst two compartments there.
And there is enough hot to be able to fit just regular
1.25 litre soft drink bottles
or a champagne bottle in there.
They fit nice and easily inside the fridge.
So plenty of room to store your drinks upright.
Now there's about six and a half centimetres of insulation
around these. So plenty of a nice thick, durable
or high quality PE foam installation that features in here
for plenty of efficiency.
And you do have a couple of lights.
So we'll just flick it on quickly to show.
There's an L.E.D light here
and another one at the other end.
So both compartments have their own L.E.D light
so you can see what's going on inside the compartment
when it's dark at night.
Now I wanna show you the control panel
and how this all works at this end here.
So start by flicking it off.
So, the entire operation of the fridge happens
from this end here.
Now just below this point here
we see a little U.S.B symbol here.
There are a couple of U.S.B ports there
so we can charge or plug in devices to the fridge
and charged from the internal battery from there,
and then above that is all a control panel.
So this button here turns it on.
We flick that and the fridge immediately turns on.
Now at the moment this is being charged
by the internal battery which is a bit flat at the moment.
If we have a look at what's going on here
we'll start in this middle bit here,
it's got a battery indicator.
So that's actually telling us that the battery inside
is about half charge, there's 11.3 volts going
and if we plug this into 240 or 12 volt power
that will jump up to sort of 12, between 12 and 14 volts
probably to show the voltage
at the input of the cable to the fridge.
Below and just to the left of that there's a little h.
Now this is the battery protection settings.
So if we're running it from say a 12 volt battery in the car
or even the battery inside we can set it to cutout
so that it doesn't flatten the battery too much.
And to change that setting
we hold down on the settings button here
for about three seconds and that will then flash.
We can see the h flashing there. If I now you press
the settings button over and over it scrolls
between h, l, m and there's different cutout voltages
for the battery inside. The user manual tells you
what those cutout voltages are.
So check the user manual
to understand what's going on there.
Let that flash until it stops and that's now set.
Next to that there's a little thing that says ECO.
Now there's an ECO mode and a MAX mode for the compressor.
If we press the settings button once that ECO flashes.
Press it again It scrolls between MAX and ECO.
MAX means the compressor is gonna run harder.
So it's gonna cool the fridge down quicker.
ECO means it's not running as hard
but we're going to get more life out of the battery.
So let it flash, once it stops flashing
it's then set on the ECO mode there.
And the last thing to show the two temperature gauges here.
Now these are indicated by these little diagrams here.
So there's kind of three sections here.
There's a small square which indicates
where the compressor is and then two bigger squares.
So this is saying that this setting here
is for the compartment
that's furthest away from the compressor
and this one is the compartment
that's closest to the compressor.
So we can set these temperatures independently.
Now to do that we use these plus and minus buttons here
but first we need to choose which zone we're gonna set.
So to do that, we press one of these
until one of those zones that flashes.
And then we use this settings button here to scroll
between which zone we're gonna set.
So that's the furthest zone
furthest away from the compressor.
Press it again. Oops! I've pressed it too often.
Just wait for that. So press it again until that flashes.
Press the settings button that's now gonna change
the temperature of the zone closest to the compressor
and I can just scroll between the two.
Now this will go between plus 19 and minus 20 degrees.
So let's set say the zone furthest away
from the compressor to minus 10, press the settings zone.
I'm gonna set this one to five.
That's not showing the actual temperature inside the unit.
So at the moment there's 20 degrees celsius, that's flashed
and gone back to the actual temperature inside.
So it's set at five, but at the moment it's 19 inside.
So relatively straightforward to operate this fridge
from just the four buttons there
especially once you've had a bit of practise.
Now I wanna jump back up to
the power end of the fridge here.
Now, everything powers a Secop compressor
or formally Danfoss Compressor inside here.
It's got an average current draw
of around about two amps per hour.
That's obviously very dependent on what you've got
the zones set at inside the fridge here
but two amps is a good average to work by.
You've got a few different power options here.
Now these are the cables. You do get a manual
as I mentioned before that comes with the fridge.
It's got a few extra bits of information
that I haven't covered today.
You get a 240 volt adapter. So this plugs into here.
You can use 240 volt power and I'll go
into a little bit more on that shortly.
And you've also got a 12 volt dc adapter here
that's connected with an Anderson plug here
that plugs into the same port that the 240 volt does.
As I mentioned I'll go a bit more on that shortly.
What I wanna show you first is the integrated battery pack.
Now under this cover here, we open that up first.
We just see a little compartment here.
Now this can be a good spot just to store your cables.
This isn't a refrigerated compartment.
It's just a storage area.
But underneath here if we put out
this little rubber patch here
there is an integrated lithium battery pack.
Now this is a lithium NMC 42 amp hour battery pack.
It's got two U.S.B ports in the top here.
So you can use this as an independent battery pack.
So if you've got this fridge plugged into say
12 or 240 volt ac it'll run without this inside
and you can use this in your tent or somewhere else
to power other devices if you want.
When you've got the battery pack in there
and plugged into 240 volt or 12 volt
that 240 volt or 12 volt will take precedence over this.
But if you've say got it connected
to the ignition source of your vehicle
you turn your vehicle off
so that 12 volt power no longer goes into the fridge.
It will revert to using this power pack to power the fridge
and you'll get about depending on
what you go the fridge set out
say 16 hours of runtime out of this battery.
So you can just take the fridge, no cables to your campsite
and not be relying on your vehicle for the day.
Now this just slides in. There's three Anderson ports
in the bottom there, they don't say anything
about using these for connection for anything else
other than connecting it to the fridge.
So this just slides into the fridge here.
And when we lock it in we push this down
and these little ports come out
just to lock it into place there.
So we slide that in, the fridge beeps once it's in place.
And that's now in there ready to power the fridge.
This just sits on top so that we're utilising that space
on top there for a bit of storage.
You can put your phone or whatever in there.
You can even use these ports while that's in there
if you like to put your phone, charge it in there
while the fridge is running too.
Then just jumping down to the cables at the end here
'cause I've got a few things I wanna run through here
or questions that I had that I've clarified.
So, as I mentioned we've got
the 240 volt power source here that plugs into this port.
It is a directional port is a little slot
in the bottom there so it only goes in this way.
The same port is used for the 12 volt dc cable here
that plugs in there as well.
And that has a, I'm just gonna undo this.
It has a cigarette plug which is attached to the cable
via an Anderson and that cigarette plug
also has a little cap on the top
that turns it into a merit plug or a cigarette plug.
Now you can charge the battery when the fridge is turned off
via this port here with any of these plugged in.
But next to this, you've also got a solar port,
or an Anderson port, sorry.
So you can charge it via solar.
Now there's one of these at each end
both of these cables feature at each end
and this is a live 12 volt dc port.
So I can plug something in there
and run something from it if you like.
You can also chain things together.
So you could have your solar panel
running into the fridge here
then use the 12 volt power Andersen port at the other end
to plug in another one of these fridges
or even a fridge that doesn't have its own battery
running off the other end.
So you could have one solar panel running two fridges
in your campsite without the need for your vehicle nearby.
So it gives you a bit of flexibility.
Now you might be looking at this cable here and be thinking
well, can I plug this in?
I don't know why you would do this.
Can I plug this into here
and then plug my solar panel into here?
You can certainly do that, but nothing's gonna happen.
The solar controller which you need to have
in the solar panel, there's no built-in solar regulator
in this here. You need to keep the solar controller
or some sort of voltage regulator on your solar panel.
That requires power both from a solar panel or initially
from the battery to wake up the solar controller.
This isn't a live port here
so there's no power coming out of this.
So the solar panels not gonna deliver anything
in through this port here.
You have to plug the solar into here.
Now an interesting thing about the solar is that
the integrated battery inside
has a maximum state of charge of 12.8 volts.
Now that can be limiting for some solar panels
because the lithium charge profile
will have a voltage that goes over 12.8 volts.
Companions' own solar panels have a controller
that allow you to limit the maximum output to 12.8 volts.
If you were to use a different solar panel
that has a maximum charge over that
you're not gonna damage the battery
but what's gonna happen is the battery is gonna cutout
and the fridge will shut down
and you need to take the battery out
and put it back in to sort of reset it.
So it is doable. And if you want to run this fridge
primarily from solar than it would be beneficial for you
to get this solar panel
or one that has a solar controller
that you can manually limit the output.
Otherwise your battery is gonna be
shutting down all the time.
If you've got another solar panel
and you just need to add a little bit of charge
then you can still do it.
Just be aware that it may cutout at certain points
and you need to lift the battery out and put it back in.
If the compressor's running, it's probably
gonna keep that voltage down low enough anyway
to be delivering some charge and running the compressor.
and you should be fine. Now regarding accessories
and things you can get for this fridge.
There's no specific fridge slide for us.
So you're gonna have to get a different branded slide
that will fit the dimensions of this fridge here
and there only nut sets in the bottom
for semipermanent mounting. So use these handles
with some straps to tie it down in the back of the vehicle
or to a fridge slide.
You can get a cover for it
which is this guy here, it's an extra. A cover is beneficial
in that it offers protection for your fridge
and also offers a little bit more insulation.
So if it is sitting in direct sunlight
it's gonna offer a bit more efficiency out of your fridge
and you do get a couple of extra storage options
but this gives you the ability
to still use all the features on the fridge
like the bottle openers, handles at the end
and you can still access the control panel.
This fridge from Companion is really an ultimately
flexible or portable option for both fridge
and freezer options away from your vehicle
or away from a 240 volt power source
and, really is going to be the life of the party.
If you turn up somewhere and you bring your whole fridge in
it's gonna keep things colder than an ice box will
without all the ice inside.
So, if you want that ultimately portable option
check out these Companion Lithium Rechargeable
Fridge/Freezers and this is the dual zone version.
You can see them online at snowys.com.au
where you'll find them at our lowest prices every day.
But if you do have any questions
let us know down in the comments below.
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or check out some other Companion fridge products
like these ones down here.
(upbeat music) (keyboard clatter)