We know GoSun for their line of solar cookers, which use reflecting surfaces to heat up an insulated vacuum tube that holds all the food you’re cooking. They give you a way to cook in the outdoors without actually starting any fire. If you’re going to cook in the outdoors, though, you’ll need to find a way to keep all that food fresh. That’s where the GoSun Chillest comes in.
A portable fridge, it’s one of those cooler-sized rigs that come with its own battery-powered 12V compressor, allowing it to refrigerate your food and drinks without the need to carry a ton of ice. While it’s hardly the first product of its kind in the category, it does integrate a solar charging facility that, on paper, should be able to regularly replenish the battery enough that you can use this to chill all the supplies you have in tow for days or weeks on end.
The GoSun Chillest looks like one of those large, wheeled coolers that come with a retractable arm for dragging behind you across beaches, boardwalks, and campsites. How large? Well, it’s got a 45-liter volume capacity, so you can fit a whole lot of stuff in there, from meats and vegetables to suds and sodas to everything in between. Inside, the main chamber is divided into two large sections, making it easy to separate your food and drinks into their own compartments, so you don’t have to rummage through the stacks of meat just to find your next beer.
It’s equipped with a 100Wh lithium battery, which, the outfit claims, is enough for around 10 hours of cooling, depending on the prevailing temperature and the chilling temperature you set inside. We know… that sounds awfully short, but they do offer the option to connect it to either an AC outlet (if you have a portable power station) or a 12V DC outlet (like the one in your car), so you have options as far as powering this thing is concerned.
The GoSun Chillest is also offered with an optional power bank that can keep it running for an extra 30 hours, as well as an optional solar table that can replenish the battery completely in as little as five hours (provided you get optimal sunlight, of course). By solar table, we mean, the darn thing is actually a table that mounts to the cooler, so you can use it to hold drinks and plates while it charges your portable fridge.
You can set the temperature anywhere between -4 degrees to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, so you could make it as freezing or as gently chilling as you like. As with many new coolers, it’s fitted with a few other conveniences, such as a storage pouch on the side, a bottle opener, built-in hooks for waste bags, and even an included cutting board that slots on the underside of the lid. It even has interior lighting, in case you get the munchies late at night.
The GoSun Chillest is currently crowdfunding on Indiegogo. Given that this is an established company with a history of multiple products under its belt, it’s easily one of the safer crowdfunding projects out there. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $699.