Bodega Portable Refrigerator Review: Spacious & Convenient
If you’re looking to upgrade your family’s camping and road trip cooler, look no further than the Bodega Portable Refrigerator.
While Bodega makes many different sizes and versions of the refrigerator cooler, the 53qt dual zone car cooler is incredibly versatile and perfect for any on-the-go adventure.
Whether you’re looking for a spacious cooler to pack snacks for your kid’s soccer game, or a place to keep all of your prepared meals while you’re on the way to your next campground, the Bodega cooler works beautifully.
In the review below, I’m detailing everything that you can expect when you purchase one of these units, including detailed information on the cooler’s included features and our experience using it across multiple trips.
Our Bodega cooler at a hotel we stayed at recently
This post contains affiliates. If you purchase through the links below, I will receive a commission at no charge to you. A Bodega unit was sent to me for the purposes of this review, but my views are my own.
What is the Bodega refrigerator?
This isn’t a regular cooler, but rather a small refrigerator/freezer on wheels that is so much more useful than a traditional cooler.
If you’ve ever gone to a hotel room and wished there was more space to keep drinks and leftover, you need this refrigerator!
It’s also the perfect solution to those camping trips where you have to keep filling up your cooler with ice and hoping that everything you brought stays properly cold. .
The Bodega does need electricity to keep your food cool and it’s 25 pounds, you don’t want to carry this into those hike-in only camping spots, but it is excellent for anyone car camping or front country camping.
If you’re using this while camping, most tent sites (and all RV sites) have a regular 12V outlet, so you can use it no matter how you’re spending time outside.
That being said, if you do have a time when you’re not near either type of outlet, you can use ice block to keep the cold items cold or use the Bodega portable battery backup (sold seperately).
One thing that I love about the 53qt Bodega cooler is the dual zone, which allows you to set each section independently of one another.
You can set each side of the Bodega refrigerator/freezer to a variety of temperatures, depending on what you’re hauling around.
The lowest temperature it can attain is -20 degrees F, which is cold enough to keep frozen items fully frozen as long as the cooler is plugged in.
Which Bodega refrigerator should I get?
There are many different versions of the car refrigerator/cooler from Bodega, depending on how much you’d like the cooler to hold, the weight you prefer, and extra features.
The 53 qt Bodega cooler that we have has wheels for easily getting it from point A to point B, as well as handles to carry it like a traditional cooler.
You can get the dual zone like we have, or a single zone if you know you’ll only be carrying items that all require the same temperature.
Bodega has smaller coolers, including this little one that would be great for afterschool activities, and this drawer-style refrigerator that’s perfect for tailgating.
Buy a Bodega unit and save! Use code “CAMPINGKIDDOS” for 12% off anything on their website!
Our experience using the 53 qt Dual Zone Bodega Portable Refrigerator
When this cooler arrived at our house for me to try out, I don’t know who was more excited: me or my husband.
He loves a good gadget, and was excited to try out all of the features on the Bodega cooler.
I love preplanning our snacks and food for our trips, so I was ready to see how much the cooler could hold…and how well the dual zone actually worked.
I’ll be the first to admit that I get very frustrated with a traditional cooler. We’ve carried those on our long road trips, and the constant need for ice and dumping the old water out gets tiresome quickly.
The Bodega refrigerator cooler cuts out both of those pain points, and it just makes road trips so much more pleasant.
Both my car and my husband’s truck have 12V plugs in the trunk area, so we can easily pop the cooler into the back of the vehicle, loaded up with food and drinks that will stay cold while we cruise down the road.
We’ve found that it cuts down so much on random purchases at convenience stores, too!
The first time we took this out was to a conference we had to go to in Atlanta. My husband and I packed in drinks and snacks for our weekend away, and it was amazing to have all of that at our fingertips in the hotel.
Drinks in the included mesh baskets on either side of the divider
The unit is very quiet, and the light hum that it makes is barely noticeable, even when we had it on in our hotel room.
While the cooler isn’t the most lightweight, the wheels make it easy for me to pull around even when we have it packed full.
I love the amount of room that is included in the 53 qt cooler. There are 2 custom fitting mesh baskets that come with the cooler which make organizing your food, drink cans, and snacks easily.
One of the things I can’t stand about a traditional cooler is the general lack of organization, but the mesh baskets and the divider keep everything where you need it to go.
If I’ve ever worried about food temperature, there’s an app that I use to check in on the refrigerator.
The app is a great addition to this cooler, as you can change the temperature even if you’re not right next to it. It’s a great feature to have if you’re camping and want to ensure that your food stays cool even on a warm day.
The unit quickly cools down from room temperature to be cold enough to chill soft drinks and water bottles. In our house, it takes less than 15 minutes to bring the cooler to around freezing.
Thanks to its versatility in power sources, the potential to add on a battery pack, and the included ice block, you can have cold or freezing food and drinks just about anywhere you need to go.
Ultimately, this is a fantastic addition to your camping and road trip gear, and it is so much easier and more convenient than a traditional cooler.
Stop messing around with bags of ice and soggy camping food, and get one of the dual zone Bodega coolers for your next trip. You won’t regret it!
