Well pleased with the cold box it's very well made and designed and also light.

Waco Tropicool TCX21

First the good part!

The service from Jacksons was first class and the cool box arrived by the due date and as advertised it was in a sealed unopened box.

This is our second Waeco cool box, the first one was the Tropicool TC 21 which we bought 26 months earlier. Now the fact that we bought a second one speaks for itself; i.e. for us it was the best buy available.

We think that it is a good cool box! Although the sales advertisement says that the cooler will cool down to 30 degrees C below the ambient temperature. This is certainly not our experience.

We leave the cooler on the lowest temperature setting, ( 7 x green digital lights showing), 24/7, when we are away and neither cool box has managed to get below 5 degrees C, even when the ambient temperature is well below 20 degrees C.

But let me clarify that remark! I keep an accurate thermometer in the middle of the cool box, so that is where the temperature is taken. Yes it does feel slightly colder at the bottom of the cool box but you can't keep all your food at the bottom!

In practice 5 degrees C is perfectly adequate. We use our cool box as a chest type fridge and it does the job admirably. We tend to go shopping every 3 or 4 days so we don't have a capacity problem, but if we had room for the larger version then that would have been the natural choice.

Now for the not so good part!

In the 2-weeks prior to the purchase of the TCX 21 we had gone off in our Campervan and had been away 10 days when I must have inadvertently caught the control panel and set our original cool box to the heat position.

When I next lifted the lid £18.00 of food had been ruined, not only that but the pack of butter based spread had melted and when I went to lift it out the carton collapsed and the spread went everywhere, including as it later turned out, through the cool box ventilation holes and onto the circuit board which promptly shorted out.

On returning home I contacted the local repair agent who advised me that it would cost as much to repair as it would to buy a new one. Those of an astute nature will realise that the guarantee had expired, although I doubt very much if self inflicted injury would have been covered. I therefore bought a new one. I bought a new one because this is the best cool box for our purposes, but it is not ideal.

So what's wrong with it?

It's got a heating system that I cannot foresee being any use whatsoever for the average camping enthusiast, and I first started caravanning in 1971. This extra fitment must increase the price so the average person is paying extra for something that they will never ever use.

So to summarise. Yes I would recommend it. But if someone made a similar cool box without the heating facility then I would buy it in preference to the TCX 21. I know that the demise of the original cool box was my own fault, but I hasten to add that the error would not have occurred if the totally unnecessary heater system had been omitted, or was an optional extra that I wouldn't have had.

So Waeco here's a challenge for you. "Make the heating element an optional extra and see how many you sell!"

Finally I can only give it 4 x stars. If it was available without the heating option it would be a definite 5 x stars plus.

Had one of these fridges for approximately 7 years was in use everyday. Gave up the ghost so needed to purchase another one.

It's for my lorry so it's on all the time nice and quiet keeps my food and drinks nice and cold very happy with my perchace