A cool experiment

My son wanted a small refrigerator in his dorm room. A freezer compartment was neither needed, nor wanted. Another consideration was compressor noise. I took a chance on Haier’s NuCool, which technically is a cooler, and not a refrigerator, because it doesn’t have a compressor. The NuCool uses thermoelectric cooling, which has limited effectiveness compared to conventional refrigerators that circulate a coolant.

At home, with an ambient temperature of 68 degrees, the NuCool did fine, and even went below 37 degrees, according to a thermometer I had placed inside. But in the dorm, without air conditioning, where the room temp was over 80, the NuCool managed only 50 degrees. This morning it was in the safe region on the thermometer, but considering NuCool’s inability to maintain a constant temperature, my inclination is to return it to Target and buy Haier’s conventional cube fridge.


Follow-up: The NuCool is a success, assuming it holds up. It seems to manage a 40-degree difference in temperature, and when it was up to 50 the room was probably 90. Since then it’s held at 35 degrees, even with the thermostat turned down a notch.

3 thoughts on “A cool experiment”

  1. My roommate and I got a fridge in our sophomore year, splitting the cost. They were available for rent on campus, as I recall. What was in it? Mostly Diet Pepsi, and desserts ripped off from the Student Union, but once the boyz found out, it was beah, beah, beah. I’ve never been fond of beer, but I was a sucker, and always nice (as was my roommate Sue), so we’d let our male friends (the platonic ones) store their suds in our little cube only if they promised not to bang on the door after 11 p.m. on weekends! USUALLY they complied. 😉

  2. We had a 12V powered thermoelectric cooler in our van for our XC trip. It was very handy for that. It didn’t always keep things COLD, but it made us feel comfortable having perishables on the trip. At night, we brought it into the motel (or wherever we were staying) and plugged it into a BIG transformer. Neat trick — the cord was reversible to turn it into a heater! We’ve yet to try it in that mode, but it’s something you’d be hard pressed to reproduce with a traditional fridge.

    That said, I’d go with a fridge for a dorm room. It may take some getting used to the noise, but getting used to noise is a useful skill in college (and beyond).

    Have a great year, Eric!

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