Upgrading to a 12v camping fridge like the Adventure Kings Fridge/Freezers will transform the way you go camping! No longer will you have to worry about your ice melting and your food going soggy and getting warm after a few days, or stress about where to find the next service station to buy more ice. With a portable camping fridge you can keep your food and drinks perfectly chilled while you’re camping, as long as you have power in your deep-cycle battery! A question we get a lot here at Adventure Kings is what temperature you should set your camping fridge to, and while that might seem like a basic question to some campers who have been out camping a lot over the years, it’s an understandable and very valid question in our books! Let’s take a look at what we recommend you set your fridge to in various different environments and circumstances.

1. WHEN YOU’RE USING YOUR CAMPING FRIDGE AS A NORMAL FRIDGE IN TEMPERATE WEATHER

Let’s first start with the most common scenario – you’ve got your Adventure Kings Camping Fridge and you want to use it as a normal fridge in temperate weather. And by temperate we mean anywhere less than about 28°C – so it could be a warm day, but not a blisteringly hot day – which we’ll talk about in a moment. In this scenario, set your digital temperature control on your camping fridge to either 2°C or 3°C. This is the perfect temperature to keep your food and drinks chilled, but also the perfect balance point between not using too much battery power and depleting your deep cycle battery too quickly. This temperature range will mean your drinks are perfectly chilled, your food is crisp and fresh and you’ll get the maximum time out of your AGM battery before you have to add a solar panel and recharge it again!

1. WHEN YOU WANT TO USE YOUR KINGS FRIDGE AS A FREEZER!

Adventure Kings Fridge/Freezers have powerful Secop compressors inside that allow them to run down as low as -18°C – yep, that’s MINUS 18 degrees Celsius! That’s a true deep-freezer there if you want to be – the perfect way to keep food frozen on a big dream camping adventure for weeks on end. However you should be aware that at that temperature, your dual-zone camping fridge or single zone camping fridge will be running flat out and will use a lot of battery power. A much better solution is to set your camping fridge to between -8°C and -10°C – this will still keep everything nicely frozen, but your 12v fridge won’t run flat out and drain your battery too quickly.

1. WHEN IT’S REALLY, REALLY HOT OUTSIDE – PARTICULARLY IF YOU’RE UP NORTH

What about when it’s stinking hot outside, as in well over 30°C? If that’s the outside ambient temperature, you can only image how hot it would get inside an unventilated rear of a vehicle or a ute canopy – sometimes easily triple that! And the double-edged sword here is when it’s hot, not only is your portable camping fridge working harder to deal with that outside air temperature, but you’re also much more likely to open your 12v fridge often for cold drinks! What we would do in this situation is recommend setting your 12v fridge/freezer to zero degrees – that’s 0°C. That way you’re giving your portable 12v fridge a bit of a head start against constantly trying to deal with the hot air you let in when you grab a cold drink. It’s definitely worth keeping in mind though that at this temperature setting, and with this sort of external air temperature, your camping fridge is going to chew through a lot more electrical power than it would on a cooler day with it set to a slightly higher temperature. The solution here is to set up your portable solar panel  or camping solar blanket to keep your battery topped up as soon as you get to camp – that way your battery has less chance of depleting and going flat. The sooner you set your portable solar for camping up, the better – especially when it’s hot – that way your camping 12v fridge can run better for longer!

1. WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU NEED TO PRESERVE YOUR BATTERY SO IT LASTS THE LONGEST?

Sometimes the biggest concern is making your deep-cycle battery for camping last as long as possible. Maybe you’re parked up camped at your favourite camp site for a week but it’s too cloudy for your portable camping solar panel to be effective, and you haven’t got a camping generator with you. In that case, the way to extend the life of your deep cycle battery is to slightly up the temperature setting on your camping fridge – but you’ve got to be careful because if you raise it too high, you get into that danger zone where food can spoil and attract bacteria. In that scenario we would be comfortable raising the temperature of a 12v fridge up to 4°C, but never above that – it’s just not worth the risk of ruining your food or getting sick!

1. WHEN YOU’RE USING IT AS A DRINKS FRIDGE DURING SUMMER

Similar to when it’s super hot outside, when you want to use your portable camping fridge as a drinks fridge during summer, you want to set it a bit lower than you normally would – typically around 0°C. That way, when you’re opening your fridge all the time to grab that next drink, you’ll be pulling out nice icy cold drinks instead of ones that are just cool enough to drink. And because you’re opening your fridge all the time letting hot air in, you’ll want your fridge to have a fighting chance at staying nice and cool!