Cool box with heater function - Chills to 18-25°C below outside temperature, warms to 50-60°C What’s the best cool box for camping? You may also want to consider the insulation of the cool box, as this can affect how well it keeps your food and drinks cold. A well insulated cool box will keep your items colder for longer periods of time. We also like that it has no hidden corners and two drainage bungs, meaning it’s easy to wash out after use. It even doubles as an extra seat and you can buy custom seat cushions to complete the look. Waterproof capabilities: particularly important for cooler bags if you're taking them out and about, but also that the lining is leakproof

Outwell have taken particular care with antimicrobial coatings on the EcoCool, and in fact it has been treated with a biocidal glass coating inside – this is a special glass which has bug-killing properties and is a real selling point in our view. Hot to trot? Compressor fridge – this is like your electric fridge at home which uses circulating refrigerant inside which expands to provide cooling. They are heavier than thermoelectric fridges and also more noisy because the compressor is a mechanical engine in effect. However, they produce exceptional chilling and can have the temperature adjusted accurately using a thermostat. Size and Capacity: Consider how much food and drinks you will need to store and choose a cool box that is the right size for you. It's also a good idea to look for a cool box with a large capacity, as you can always use the extra space to store additional items.

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However, while these are useful options, you do pay for them, so which box best combines performance with price? We loaded up and plugged in eight units to see which would be the best travel companion this summer. How we tested them The ECO Deep Extreme has several different capacity options in the range. The coolers start at a ‘car-friendly’ 26 litre capacity up to our favourite in the range shown above – the 45 litre giant which has its own carry handle and wheels to help move it around. We’ll concentrate on that one for this review.

Weight: a cool box for keeping drinks cold in the garden can be weighty, but if you're travelling with it over a short distance, a lighter option with wheels will be better Capacity: how many people will you be catering for? The size of cool bags are often described in litres rather than people, but as a rule of thumb, 18 litres will carry between 25-28 cans, 30 litres will fit around 50, and anything above this will be large enough for a variety of food and drink vessels Don’t empty the melted ice. The cold water acts as an insulator and will help food stay chilled for longer. The cheapest cool box in our recommendation is the HI-GEAR 20L Cooler. It is another 12V only system which can cool food and drinks to around the 10°C mark. For the money, it’s excellent value and has a few extra little design touches we like.

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The EcoCool offers two cooling modes with a cooling delta of up to 25°C below the outdoors temperature on the MAX setting operation. This means that even on a scorching day, you can still get temperatures close to freezing. Quite frankly, few items are as important in a camp environment as having a top-performing electric cool box. From our experience, it is important to carefully examine the features of a particular product to make sure it will match up to the conditions under which you will be using it. The 45l ECO Deep offers the convenience of using either AC (240V) or DC (12V) power connection. Current draw is low at only 5 amps, even on 12V power which means a typical 100Ah leisure battery will not get drained until after about 20 hours of continuous operation.