The best 12V fridge freezers for camping in Australia

A 12V compressor fridge is the most useful piece of camping power gear and, because it runs day and night, the one that decides how big your battery needs to be. Prices below are from BCF, Snowys, Anaconda, 4WD Supacentre and EcoFlow on 18 October 2026, re-checked on 14 November 2026; for models also on Amazon Australia, check the current price on Amazon. We compared maker specifications and retailer listings; we have not run these fridges on our own trips.

Read the power figure, not the litres

Every fridge here is a compressor fridge, and every one will keep food cold. What separates them is how much battery they use doing it, and how honestly the maker tells you.

The useful figure is an average draw with a test condition. Dometic gives 0.86A an hour for the CFX5 45 at a 4°C setting. EvaKool gives 1.8Ah an hour at 12V for the DU250-DZ with the fridge at 2°C, the freezer at -16°C and 32°C outside, which is a hard test and why the number looks bigger. EcoFlow gives 0.67Ah an hour as a fridge and 2.6Ah an hour freezing, both at 25°C.

Some listings give something else. Dometic’s CFF 50LPDZ shows a rated current of 6.8A at 12V: that is the most it draws while the compressor runs, not its average. Engel gives “0.5A to 3.0A per hour” with no temperature. Kings and Dune publish no draw at all. Those fridges may be fine, but you cannot size a battery from their spec sheets.

The comparison

Prices are the lowest we found at full price; BCF and Anaconda Club prices are lower for members. The Kings Escape 65 and EcoFlow GLACIER Classic are also sold on Amazon Australia; check the current price on Amazon.

What the draw means for your battery

Multiply the hourly figure by 24. The CFX5 45 at Dometic’s setting uses about 21Ah a day; the EvaKool on its tougher test about 43Ah. A 100Ah lithium battery covers the first for four days and the second for two, before any charging. That gap is why the lithium battery guide and the portable power station guide both start with the fridge.

Freezing is the expensive part. EcoFlow’s own figures for the GLACIER Classic 45L are 190Wh a day as a fridge and 750Wh a day as a freezer, nearly four times as much. Run a dual-zone fridge with a small freezer section, not a big one.

The picks

The Dometic CFX5 45 is the one we would buy. Vacuum insulated panels, a variable-speed Dometic compressor, 46 litres (67 cans), +10°C to -22°C, a published 0.86A an hour at 4°C and a five-year warranty. It is $1,349 at Snowys and $1,449 at BCF ($1,249 Club price).

The Dometic CFX2 45 has the same published draw for less: $589 on sale at Anaconda on 14 November 2026 ($1,179 when we checked on 18 October); BCF was out of stock. It skips the CFX5’s vacuum panels and is 2.1 kg lighter at 16.8 kg.

For a fridge and freezer in one, the EvaKool DU250-DZ is Australian-made with a Secop compressor, a removable divider (16L and 34L) and a five-year warranty, $1,049 at Snowys. The Dometic CFF 50LPDZ is the cheaper dual zone at $839 and only 407 mm tall, but it carries three years of warranty and Dometic publishes only its rated current.

The Engel MT-V45J is the traditional choice: a Sawafuji swing motor (BCF says the design is more than 59 years old), a powder-coated steel body and five years on the motor, $1,499 at BCF on 14 November 2026 (Snowys was out of stock). At 24 kg empty it is the heaviest here.

The EcoFlow GLACIER Classic 45L ($899) is the one to buy if you do not have a second battery: add EcoFlow’s 298Wh plug-in battery ($349) and EcoFlow quotes 39 hours at 4°C, or charge it from a 110W panel. At the budget end, the Kings Escape 65 is $199 and the Dune 4WD Frontier 50L $299; both have two-year warranties, no published draw, and 240V adaptors sold separately.

Running it in the car

A fridge plugged into the car’s 12V socket draws from the starting battery. Most fridges here have three-stage battery protection, which cuts out at a set voltage, but overnight that still leaves less in the battery than you might like. For trips longer than a night, run it from a lithium second battery charged by a DC-DC charger, or from a power station. A fixed Anderson plug or 12V socket in the cargo area, wired back to the battery, is a job for an auto electrician: the cable size and fusing matter at fridge currents.

Add solar for camps longer than a few days. BCF’s listing says the CFX5 can run from solar panels, and EcoFlow’s GLACIER takes up to 110W directly.

Buying for the holidays

BCF and Anaconda run Club prices on Dometic and Engel through the year, and both had Club prices on the day we checked. Snowys was lower than BCF’s full price on every fridge both stores carried. Buy before the December to January holidays or Easter, and run the fridge at home for a day to check it pulls down to temperature.

What to avoid

Choosing on litres alone. The published draws we found run from 0.67Ah to 1.8Ah an hour, each under different test conditions, and a 65-litre fridge with no published draw tells you nothing about the battery it needs. Ask for the average draw and the temperature it was measured at. If the retailer cannot give it, assume the higher end and buy the battery to match.