This cooler wants to revolutionize camping

If you don't want to go without chilled food and drinks when camping in the wilderness or at a festival, the Qool Box is the ideal solution. It should be able to keep contents fresh for days without a power supply. But does the rather expensive cool box actually do what it promises?

Summer vacation away from hotel strongholds and vacation apartments: Camping is trendy. This is evidenced not least by overcrowded campsites, where everyone from city hipsters to elderly permanent campers flock. This usually has little to do with adventure and nature. However, those looking for isolation usually have to do without amenities such as a permanent toilet, WiFi or chilled food. The company Qool is now promising an innovative solution to the latter problem: a cool box that doesn't require any electricity and keeps the contents cool for up to ten days. But does the Qool box actually do what it promises? ntv.de has tested it.

With its intense blue, the box is a real eye-catcher. If you prefer something more discreet, you can also buy it in black for a few euros more, made from recycled material. Otherwise, the box is rather simple in terms of its design, but it is robust and durable. It can easily withstand a careless blow to the door frame or rough driving in the car. No sign of dents or broken pieces. Particularly practical: You can even use the box as a seat. The manufacturer offers matching seat cushions for this. However, everyone has to decide for themselves whether they want to spend 45 euros on it. A standard piece of upholstery will do just fine.

The box also offers plenty of space. Breakfast shopping, a bit of fruit and vegetables, a carton of milk, a tetra pack of juice and two cans of lemonade can all be easily stored. For a party outing, ten bottles of beer easily fit in and even lots of wine bottles can be placed upright in it. Thanks to the large handles, the box can also be easily carried into the car or to the beach - although at ten kilograms it is not exactly lightweight, especially compared to cooler bags.

From space travel to the cooler

But now to the actual function of the Qool box. After all, it is supposed to cool over a long period of time, without electricity. And this much can be revealed: It works. It is made possible by vacuum insulation panels, which are also used in space travel. In combination with the large ice packs, you can start your self-sufficient camping trip or to a festival without any worries. However, you should bear a few things in mind beforehand. For example, it is advisable to only pack pre-cooled food and drinks in the Qool box. Although the box can also cool lukewarm Coke bottles down to refrigerator temperature, for example, this significantly reduces the cooling performance overall. You should also try to open the box as rarely and as briefly as possible. And the ice packs must be put in the freezer for at least twelve hours before use. According to the manufacturer, the cooling elements contain so-called phase change material "and can absorb or release energy at a certain temperature," as it says on the Qool website. What sounds unusual is actually the same technology on which all ice packs are based. Nevertheless, Qool's cooling elements stay cold for a particularly long time, especially compared to the standard blue batteries. This may be due to their size. At the same time, however, this is also a small disadvantage.

The box also creates ice

The manufacturer recommends using all four cooling elements supplied and placing them on the sides and on top of the goods, as cold always goes down. In fact, in our test, the box stayed cool for the longest time this way. But it's not really practical. The four large batteries take up a relatively large amount of space. This means you lose valuable storage space, especially for 1-liter bottles, when the batteries are placed on top. This means that 5 liters of the 27-liter capacity of the M version are lost. However, if you only want to use the box for grilled food or chilled food, the method works excellently. Even after five days, the temperature inside rose from zero to just five degrees in our test. The curd was still firm, the cheese didn't even sweat. You could even have thrown meat on the grill without a second thought. Only the ice cubes were - not surprisingly - more water than ice at this point. For frozen products, the manufacturer offers the "Standard Frozen" cooling elements, which are designed to keep frozen food frozen for up to ten days. We were not able to test this variant. However, if you don't want to do without ice cubes or ice cream when camping independently, you can simply reorder the batteries. At 80 euros for four, however, this is not a cheap deal.

Expensive, but impressive

This brings us to the biggest drawback of the passive cool box: the price. Although Qool offers a lot and does what it promises when handled correctly, it is also very expensive. In the basic version, the middle version with four cooling elements costs a whopping 400 euros. Customers usually have to pay less even for branded compressor cool boxes. The manufacturer of the Qool box is so confident in its product that it offers a 10-year quality guarantee. And we were also impressed by the blue cooling wonder (apart from the price). Whether on a day trip to the beach, during a festival or on a week-long holiday on the Baltic Sea - the Qool box kept the food fresh and the drinks cold. It only cannot compete with its electric counterparts on longer trips. After eight days, the refrigerator-cold drinks were a thing of the past. Nevertheless, anyone who is prepared to invest the money will certainly not regret it. Because apart from the fact that it doesn't need electricity, the Qool Box is unbeatable in another respect compared to compressor coolers: it is absolutely quiet. No annoying humming noise that disturbs your sleep, especially at night in a camper. This means you can enjoy nature away from overcrowded campsites.

- Source: ntv.de

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Qool without electricity: This cool box wants to revolutionize camping - n-tv.de