DC85-X Heavy Duty Upright 85L Fridge/Freezer 12V/24V

The Bushman DC85-X is the mid-size upright in Bushman's Heavy Duty DC-X range. It gives you 85 litres of usable space with a proper internal freezer, in a cabinet compact enough to fit most caravan, camper trailer and canopy joinery, and it draws around 1.3 amp hours per hour at 25°C ambient, averaged across a full day.

It runs a genuine Secop Danfoss BD35HD compressor, a 60W unit on a variable speed drive that modulates its output to suit the load rather than simply cycling hard on and off. That is what keeps the average current draw low across 24 hours. It carries a Tropical 'T' rating and is rated to hold temperature in ambients up to 43°C, which matters far more in an Australian summer than a headline capacity figure does.

Inside you get adjustable shelving, a crisper drawer, deep door balconies with guard rails to keep everything in place while you are moving, and a 6 litre freezer compartment that is deliberately deep and narrow so it takes as little as possible from the fridge space. Internal LED lighting and an internal circulation fan keep the temperature even from top to bottom, and the door is reversible so you can hinge it to suit your layout.

A full mounting kit is supplied and the fridge comes with a 1.2 metre Anderson plug lead already fitted. It can be flush mounted into cabinetry or fitted with the door proud, and Bushman support four separate mounting methods so you can pick what suits your build. The one thing worth getting right is ventilation: the compressor area needs free air in and out, and Bushman specify two rear vents of 400cm² free area each. Wire it on its own dedicated circuit straight back to your battery bank.

If you are weighing this up against the larger DC130-X, both fridges are 550mm deep and use the same mounting approach, so the decision comes down to the opening you have. The DC85-X needs a cut out of 630mm high by 480mm wide. The DC130-X needs 755mm high by 530mm wide for another 45 litres of space.