Truma Electric Cooler - Dual Zone - 100 Qts - Gray

Video Transcript for Truma Dual Zone Electric Cooler Review

Hi everyone, it's Evangeline here at etrailer and today we'll be taking a look at our Truma coolers. So for your different types of adventures whether you're boating, tailgating, you have a beach party, the important thing is you are gonna need to eat some way somehow. So you need to bring around some ingredients or some food so that you can enjoy your adventures. Great way to do that is with a cooler. So these are rugged and portable coolers. Truma has a bunch of different options.

We are gonna focus on the dual zone coolers today. If you wanna take a look at our single zone coolers, we also have a review video for those. So you have two different options for the dual zone coolers, you have the C69 and the C96. Both of them have the option of having refrigeration and freezing functions at the same time. The main difference is gonna be lid design as well as size.

So the larger one, the C96 works as a true dual freezer and refrigerator where you have two separate compartments. You can adjust the temperature for both compartments. One can work as refrigerator, one can work as freezer. Now the C69 works as a single zone with an attachable wall. So here on the inside you can remove this wall if you want the entire unit to work as a freezer or a refrigerator or pop that right in and adjust accordingly.

So this is popular for its ruggedness and you can see it in the way this is designed. So your lid and your sides, they are reinforced with steel. You also have reinforced corners so that your box stays a box and it holds itself together. Not as rugged though is the outer coating. So dragging this around, lifting it in and out of vehicles, it can get scuffed up pretty easily.

So in that case, I would recommend taking a look at the custom fit cover for this. If you wanna prevent those scratches. On the sides, you have these flip out handles and they flip right back in automatically. So that's gonna be for space conservation. The handles are strong and sturdy but with these being dual zone coolers they are larger, they are bulkier. I do recommend having a second person to help you lift it around the site. So here up top, we have this rubberized textured panel. So that way if you have your cutting board, your mug, your kettle, rather than them sliding around on your cooler place it on that panel and it holds it in place. Now this does not have its own battery so you are gonna have to keep it plugged in so that everything stays cool on the inside. So your options for that, they do give you two plugs. You can use AC or DC power. We currently have it connected to our DC 12 volt plug in the camper. You can plug it into short power which I always recommend if possible. But this does have a smart sensor so that way even if it's plugged into your vehicle's battery your battery will not die. Here in the bottom panel you have those two ports for your AC and your DC power. You also have your emergency override and your normal use. So this means during normal use, keep that over there. If by any chance your app or your control panel stops working and you can't make adjustments you can flip this right over to emergency override. That means your cooler's gonna work at its highest possible setting and just keep cooling. Don't leave it on too long or else things might start to freeze. So for the length of the cord, I measure plug to plug. And for your AC it's gonna be 72 inches long which is six feet, a bit taller than I am. And then for the DC, which is currently plugged in that's going to be 81 inches long, not the longest cord. But to help with that they do have a DC port on each side of the cooler. That way that can help you get set up for the best position to plug it in. Here we have our control panel. So you have your power button you also have your turbo setting button. So when you first start your cooler and plug it in I do recommend setting it over to turbo. This is gonna be your fast chill setting. And once you just wanna maintain temperature, turn turbo off. Here we have our settings button. So this will cycle you through the different options. So here you can adjust your temperature. We'll get to that in a second, and here you can adjust whether you want it to read out as Fahrenheit or Celsius. Then there's the battery protection. So you have low, medium, as well as high. You can also make your temperature adjustments here. So just flip that over and then go up or down in temperature. The coldest this can go down to is negative eight degrees Fahrenheit. So while you have a control panel for adjusting the temperature you can also access this with the Truma cooler app. So if you want to, you can use the QR code on the side of the cooler. You can also use the Bluetooth function, that way, if you need to change the temperature and you don't wanna reach all the way back into your truck bed or into your hatch to do so, you can just adjust on your phone. So you can take a look at where it sees the different voltages for that battery protection. And my general rule of thumb is if I'm car camping and I have a cooler like this I set that battery protection all the way to high because I wanna make sure it doesn't short out. Plus my battery stays protected of my vehicle. Now when I'm connected to short power I set it all the way down to low. Now this is more of a smart cooler than some of the other brands so really whichever situation you're in. And I do have friends that have it connected to their car battery all day, all weekend and they we're fine. But it's just nice to have that peace of mind. So this has a compressor on the inside of the cooler and you can see in the corners how it has vents for that compressor. Please keep those vents free of debris and don't let them get covered up. Now, ideally you would have this on a stable surface but I know some sites have a little bit of an incline. This can still operate at an incline of up to 30 degrees. But if you notice that your cooler starts making a lot of noise, it's probably on an incline and the compressor has to work a little bit extra harder to keep things refrigerated. So with these being bulkier sometimes you put your cooler up against the wall and you realize the lid's facing the other way. Rather than having to twist or turn the entire cooler around you can just turn the lid around. So these actually just come off of the hinge, one and two, flip it around, pop it right back in. So this is a C69 and this is a C96. So Truma likes to use liters, but what I've noticed is in the over landing community, we like to use quarts. So this is going to be 72 quarts of space. This is gonna be 100 quarts of space. And breaking that down, see these 12 ounce cans Well this can carry up to 87 12 ounce cans while this one can carry up to 132 of these cans. You also have these baskets included. And the baskets help with organization. So you could just organize your baskets at your house or in your kitchen before you drop them right in. But they also help with the airflow while this is being cooled up. This means you don't have to deal with ice you don't have to deal with the water. The air helps keep everything cool more efficiently. And as you stack things up, it's a little bit more forgiving since you still have two extra inches above the basket because the indentation of the lid and you can still store things in there. So if you want an in depth look at the really specific measurements for the interior as well as the exterior we do have some tabletop reviews that really go into that. Definitely worth checking out for those numbers. So we've had these coolers around for a bit. We got to play around with them, go on different adventures. So for one example, my friend Bob, he took this out to the farm for a weekend and before leaving he plugged it in and it went down from 72 to 44. So a 30 degree drop in just two hours is pretty good. What was impressive though was he had a drive for about three hours. So the cooler was unplugged, and even then it only increased about 10 degrees for that time. So all in all, that drop during and that really hot day plus it not increasing much in temperature is a solid performance from the cooler. So along with how heavy these coolers are especially when you have them loaded with all your ingredients or your food, it can be a lot of weight. So I highly recommend having a friend help you out with lifting it into things like your truck beds or your cars. So we measured the covers earlier and this is a great example where it would come in handy. So with it being in the truck bed, it can slide around. Having the cover on it would help prevent scuffs and scratches from happening to the cooler. But the cover also has some D ring tie down points to help keep the cooler strap down. Now after use, sometimes there can be a little bit of debris, there can be condensation on the inside of your cooler. So what I do is I just start taking everything out. Just take out the baskets, take out the wall, and I just go over everything with a wet rag and some cleaner. And even if you get this a little wet or if there's water on the inside you also have this drain plug to just twist up to loosen and then just let everything drain out before loading this up again. Now the removable wall in the C69 does have this gasket here to help keep things sealed but the gasket does come up on the corners. So we can see how there's a special channel here where the wall's supposed to slide through. After a bunch of people have used it. This has been used for different weekend trips. I do believe that's caused the gasket to tear up a little bit on this side. So the bottom gasket is still good, still great but it is something to be mindful after a lot of use. Now my personal thoughts about these coolers especially the dual zone ones, is that they are probably one of the most feature rich, sturdy and rugged coolers that we have especially with having that dual zone and you can adjust the temperature on each side. It works out great. Now, on the other side, if you want it for its portability these probably aren't the most portable coolers. They're hefty, they're bulky, they're designed to move into one place and stay there as part of your setup. If you want a smaller cooler that still has a dual zone you may wanna check out the Everchill portable refrigerator. That one doesn't have as many features. It's not as rich as this one but it might have its purpose in terms of portability. You can also take a look at the single zone coolers because those do come in smaller sizes, but again you can't have the freezing and the refrigeration aspect. So hopefully this video helped you out with seeing how this works, how well it works and where you can put it. But right here, right now, this was a look at our Truma coolers with a dual zone here at etrailer.com..