when I decided to take the plunge on buying a portable fridg\freez I had a lot of questions I asked myself. The most important was reliability. I didn't want a portable fridg that would quite working after a few trips or even a year & or shuts off at rough offroad travels. Another was power consumption, even though price on lesser expensive portable fridg's were tempting there use of power was another issue that concerned me. On American Adventurist forum I asked several members about portable fridg\freez, the majority of them who replied to me stating "buy once cry once." I ended up purchasing Engel MT27 22qt., even though the price of the Engel was shocking the reliability, extremely low power consumption made up for the sticker price shock. Since then I've upgraded to a larger Engel 40qt. MR040 & love the Engel. I am not saying Engel is the best what I am saying is to invest into a portable 12v.\110 fridg\freez price isn't always the best mark for purchasing a portable fridg\freez. The reason of Engel, ARB, Snomaster, Dometic are in the higher price bracket is of quality parts, low power consumption, consistently unfailing customer service, reliability of keeping steady temperature & offroad travels ruggedness. There lots of copycats 12v. fridgs out their, & the most well known complaints are customer service, power consumption & reliability. These copy cats have horrible customer service (usually over seas) limited warranty, power consumption is moderate to twice the consumption of a known brand. Many quality 12v.\110 portable fridg\freez like Engel have yearly sales that drop the price low as 200.00 off list price @ certain times of the year. I know this, I bought both of my Engels this way. Another option is a buying a good quality fridg\freez used from another fellow adventurist. I see these up for sale all the time on American Adventurist & other forums.