National Luna 60L fridge/freezer: 4x4 product test

THIS IS the third National Luna fridge we’ve owned over the past 20 or so years, and I’ve always been a little surprised (and miffed) when they’ve failed after about 10 years and haven’t been worth repairing.

Still, we keep getting them, so we must be impressed with them in other ways. We give our fridges a hard time and probably use them off-road more than most, as we spend six to nine months on the road each year. So anything we use gets a near-continuous and pretty hard life.

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All National Luna fridges come with German-engineered and built Danfoss compressors and controllers, while each unit has National Luna’s own fan-assisted condenser, full wall-plate evaporator system, control panel and interface for maximum efficiency.

This 60-litre fridge/freezer is a twin-compartment, dual-control unit; the left-hand freezer bin offering 25 litres of space and the right-hand fridge bin 35 litres. The freezer compartment is wrapped with 60mm-thick insulation, while the fridge area sports 42mm-thick insulation.

Two control panels on the front of the fridge mean you can set the temperature independently; the freezer box anywhere between 20°C and -24°C, and the fridge between 20°C to -12°C.

Battery consumption is rated by the manufacturer at a healthy current draw of 34.72amp/h for a 24-hour period. This is measured with a seemingly practical setting of -10°C and 4°C over 24 hours in ambient temperatures of 21°C for 12 hours (simulating overnight), 32°C for seven hours (morning/evening) and 43°C for five hours (midday/afternoon). I normally run the freezer at -6°C and the fridge at 4°C and the current draw is very reasonable. A choice of 12/24V DC and 240V AC are all built-in and the unit will automatically select to run on mains power whenever it is available.

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The unit measures 535 x 750 x 425mm (H x W x D) and if you don’t have a drop-down fridge slide (which I haven’t at this stage, as this new fridge was too big for my previous slide) you’ll find it a pretty tall unit, making access a little inconvenient. Five supplied plastic baskets help alleviate that issue to some degree.

National Luna fridges are more expensive than similar-sized units in the Aussie marketplace, so you’re paying for that German compressor, all-metal construction and three-year warranty. Even so, would I get this sized unit again? Probably not.

Instead, I would go back to the National Luna 50-litre Weekender (40-litre fridge; 10-litre freezer) we had, which would fit on my fridge slide. The Weekender isn’t as tall and we made better use of the 40-10 configuration than the 35-25 of the current unit.

RATED
Available from: www.nationalluna.com.au
RRP: $1995
We Say: Expensive, but worth considering.