Black & Decker BDV212F Travel Cooler

29th August 2008 Adam Rayner

The full ‘name’ of this product is the Black & Decker Thermo Electric Travel Freezer, Cooler & Warmer. It is a solid feeling plastic enclosure with a vented area at the front. The top is upholstered and in the right vehicle could make a useful centre armrest/console, complete as it is with two 330ml can-sized cup holder holes. The upholstered lid lifts on a clip to reveal a central cavity section. At the base of this lies a silvery plastic coated foam pad that interference-fits perfectly with the lip of the metal-cased section below that. Lift it out and you find just enough space to take six 330ml cans. If you use the box without this divider it’ll be an active nine litre cool box. Use the box with this fitted and you can then freeze enough ice for a jug of Pimm’s in the tiny ice cube tray. Apparently, you fill the tray one quarter full before placing it in the base and putting the pad in place. The 12V DC cord is suitably thick and is generously long at 2.1m. It is housed within a door-covered compartment in the front of the unit when not in use. A single switch controls whether it is heating to a possible 48ï¿½C, cooling to a possible 27ï¿½C below ambient or off. Each hot or cold operation has its own LED indicator, as does a low battery icon lamp in between. A tough fabric pocket is fitted to one side and the front vented area contains the Thermo-Electric circuit (which can operate as a heat pump, moving heat in, or out of the box) which has its own fan to cool itself. This zone must of course be left unimpeded for flow of air.- Thermo Electric System detects the ambient temperature and self regulates to keep contents at the proper cooling/warming temperatures.

– Separate freezer compartment including ice tray
– Cools to 27 degrees C below the ambient temperature
– Heats up to 48 degress C
– Low voltage auto cut off system saves vehicle battery
– Fan cooled thermo-electric circuit
– Compact design: fits onto car seat or floor
– 9 litres capacity food/drink storage compartment
– Mass: 4.3kg
– Carry strap
– Cord storage compartment houses 2.1m 12V DC cord
– Dual cup holder on top
– Zippered fabric pouch compartment on side for extra storage – Climatic Class T (Temperate)
– Current draw 5 Amperes @ 12V DC
– Cold/Off/Hot Switch
– Low vehicle battery indicator lamp with printed icon
– Hot LED indicator lamp
– Cold LED indicator lamp
– C/W Ice tray and insulator pad

Review by Adam Rayner
Think about this for a second. ‘Civilisation is measured by the number of refrigeration circuits in your life’ OK, basic civilisation is a fridge. If you can afford it, you have a freezer. How bout a fridge in your work place? Nice but not guaranteed. How about one in your bedroom, or hotel room? Now we are talking minibars and cold champers in bed. What about aircon in your car? A real divide now. Yes if you have a posh enough or new enough value-included car but lots of regular folk have no aircon in their cars. Now, finally, what about a pukka, actual fridge in your car? Not a box with freezy packs in, but a thing that plugs in? That’s Limo stuff isn’t it?
Well, I’m a sad case and have wanted to try one of these things so badly I could taste it, for literally years. I have been researching this review for ever! Thing is, a car cooler is also a warmer as the energy-moving circuit is not based on Freon or some other CFC replacement gas being expanded and whooshed about like inside your fridge indoors but is more like the groovy heat pumps that can somehow heat bathwater by lying their collectors in a stream, or in a field. They act by taking the heat from the ambient zone they are facing and moving it. If the thing is removing heat from its insides and pumping it into the world, it is cooling the inside. If it is taking heat from the outside, it’s a heater. In theory, you could use it to hold Sushi for lunch and some cold pop and then later, once emptied, leave it for five minutes in the off position and let it warm up so as to collect some Chinese food to take home from that favourite eatery a bit far flung. Except that the best performance is only obtained some two hours after connection to the 12V. So in truth, what you do is to follow the instructions and place pre chilled or pre heated items into the box.

I plugged the thing into the special 4x12V socket adapter I recently got hold of (I have multiple carbuncles Personal Nav Device, Road Angel Pro Connected GPS trap-finder here and a Snooper radar/laser Detector and a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System) as I needed a spare for the car phone charger and my son’s Nintendo DS car charger. It has a special high-current socket on the end with more wellie than the other three, rated to operate an actual er, cigarette lighter. (Most odd.) I was worried that all the current draw would pop the fuse in the stock wiring loom in my car. However, despite there being so many items all loomed up like a disease to my 12V socket, the unit didn’t seem to mind. I dragged said offspring all the way to Birmingham to go see Four distribution and it kept the cans of Diet Coke not just cold but absolutely luxuriously icy-chilled. I can entirely understand that an ice tray in the base would freeze solid.

When I came to take the unit out of the car I did find that the plug assembly and the socket system itself had got pretty warm. In fact too hot to touch a few minutes after I had turned the engine off. However, when it was time to take the journey from Watford to Cirencester in order to review a 7.2 channel speaker system for Home Cinema Choice magazine, we used the PR guy’s Porsche Cayenne. (Oh I am in the wrong job.) That had a brace of 12V sockets in the rear but oddly enough none for the dash, which is a little paternalistic but then it is German.

The unit was again operated for hours in each direction and despite my son pointing out as we left, ‘Doesn’t it have to be switched on Dad?’ it did in fact get to work again like a dream and the plug didn’t heat up at all. Best used directly connected then. I know that the heater circuit is an inherent part of such a product as all the ones I have ever seen have had the same heater abilities as well as being coolers but I can tell you that the real way these things are rated is by the number of degrees in centigrade the power available (in this case a 5 Ampere thermo-electric circuit) can take the internal temperature down by. A lot of new own-brand cheapies are on sale right now for less than this one (which is also sold at a mad fat price by a company that sells to Yachtie folk who won’t perceive it as worth a damn if it’s too far below £100!) but those units are rated to far less degrees-below-ambient than this one. Most are to around -20°C but this unit is good for -27°C. This is as good as any I have seen, ever, although I did stumble upon an insanely rich vein of fun 12V accessories at a truck stop the other day. And they had some real monsters for lorry cabs. Big fridges, ovens, toasters, popcorn makers and fry pans, anyone?

The strap is wide, the side baggie only slightly useful as it is so small (perhaps for some boat keys?) but I feel an ideal use for this is boaty folk with big battery banks or of course you lovely lot. Brethren with deep cycle batteries for bass and a bit of grip for your SQ install.

The only thing I didn’t like was the cheaper plastic used by the supplier of the electric bits’ compartment door. Perhaps it’s a plastic that will last years and can cope with lots of heating and chilling without cracking or perhaps its just cheap but a solidly fitting door would be nicer. As it is, you have to take coiley-care when putting the wire away.

This is just quibbles though as I reckon this is a top-of-the-line-product of its type and of course bears the mighty Black & Decker branding, which means quality backup and helpful technical support and I know ‘cos I tried it and the bloke was a diamond. I wanted to check if it IS a heat pump or if I am utterly piffle-speaking. (I can see the comments of ‘What, for a change?’ from some)

An utterly brilliant accessory for anyone who ever took a cool box to a weekend do and got a nasty dose of the horrids from eating undercooked, badly stored sausages. That’s be most of them as camps at these shows, then!

Alternatively, it’s ice cold pop in a baking car on the motorway and that’s bloody wonderful. Unreservedly recommended!

Build Quality 8.0
Appearance 9.0
Ease Of Installation 10.0
Effectiveness 9.0
Value For Money 8.0
Overall rating 8.8