Dometic CFX3 45 vs ICECO VL45: Same Box, Same Amp-Hours, Different Warranty, Weight and Cutoff

Short answer: they hold the same food and, by every published figure, cost you about the same amp-hours a day. The Dometic CFX3 45 is a 46 litre box that weighs about 43 lb and runs an app. The ICECO VL45 ProS is a 45 litre steel box about nine pounds heavier, with a 5-year warranty on its SECOP compressor against the 3 years Dometic lists for the CFX3, and no app. Both sit inside the 25 to 40 amp-hours a day our amp-draw post plans on.

So this is not a performance decision. Buy the ICECO if the fridge lives on a wired second battery or a power station and you want the longest warranty on the part that fails. Buy the Dometic if it rides on the starter battery, if you lift it in and out of the truck, or if you want to check it from the driver’s seat. The one real technical difference is the low-voltage cutoff, and I explain below why that favours the Dometic on a starter battery and the ICECO on lithium.

What is actually different between the CFX3 45 and the VL45?

Less than the gap between them suggests. Here they are side by side, from Dometic’s and ICECO’s own pages, with the holes left where the maker prints nothing.

Two notes on reading that. Dometic’s 8.2 amps is the rated input current, the most the fridge will ask for when the compressor starts; it is why a 10 amp car socket runs one fridge and nothing else, and it is not what the fridge averages. And the two consumption lines are not on the same basis, which is the next section.

Which one uses less power?

Nobody has published a same-room, same-meter test of these two, and I have not run one. What exists is each maker’s sheet, on different test conditions, and one owner’s station reading of the ICECO. Here is all of it, with the basis named, so you can see why the sheets cannot be ranked against each other.

Read it this way. Dometic tests at 32 C and its figure comes to 25 amp-hours a day. ICECO’s comes to 29 and it does not say at what temperature, so it may be a cooler room or a warmer one. The one ICECO reading with its conditions attached, the Wrangler owner’s, lands at about 42 amp-hours a day in a 73 F room, but that is in MAX mode and it includes whatever the power station spends running itself; on the ECO setting the same owner metered the fridge pulling 30 watts running instead of 51. A Dometic owner on Overland Bound says his CFX3 has “never had it run over 1AH” an hour in summer, and Overland Expo’s reviewer left his CFX3 45 running eight days in direct sun in a driveway on an auxiliary lithium battery that “never dropped below 66%”. None of that separates the two. Both are compressor fridges of the same size with the same insulation job to do, and the honest planning number for either is the same 25 to 40 amp-hours a day. Size the battery on that, not on the sheet.

This is my reading of published figures, not a test. If you want the one thing that does move the number, it is ambient temperature and how often the lid opens, not the badge.

Which low-voltage cutoff is right for your battery?

This is the only line in the table that changes what happens at 3 am. Both fridges switch themselves off when the supply voltage sags to a set point, to protect a starter battery. The set points are not the same, and the labels hide it. From the two manuals:

ICECO’s High is 11.1 volts, which is lower than Dometic’s Medium. On a starter battery that matters: Dometic’s High stops at 11.8 volts and will not restart until 12.6, which is a battery still able to crank; ICECO’s High takes a lead-acid starter battery noticeably further down before it lets go. On a LiFePO4 house battery or a power station it is the other way round: by the resting-voltage table in our cutoff post, lithium holds about 13 volts almost to empty and then drops fast, so Dometic’s Low at 10.1 volts and ICECO’s Medium at the same 10.1 both sit under the battery’s own disconnect, and ICECO’s Low at 9.6 is lower still. The full by-brand table, what each voltage means on each battery, and why thin socket wiring makes a healthy battery read flat are in our cutoff post.

That cutoff is also a common Dometic complaint. One CFX3 45 owner on Overland Bound had his cut out “a little over an hour” in, at 75 F outside, on a five-year-old battery through the rear socket; it ran longer from the front socket, and the thread’s answer was the factory wiring (one guess was 18 gauge) and the battery, not the fridge. Run either fridge on its own 10 gauge feed from the battery; our wire gauge post has the sums.

What is it like to live with each one?

Dometic CFX3 45

Overland Expo ran one for many months in a Bronco. The notes that stuck: he checks and adjusts it from the driver’s seat, a camp chair or the rooftop tent on the app, the latch releases easily but “the lid is light enough that it doesn’t close on its own” so he presses the top to be sure, the basket dividers kept food from shifting, two people get “perhaps four nights and five days” out of it, and he wished it were bigger. The verdict was “buy once, cry once”. The spec sheet he quotes gives an average draw of 0.8 amps an hour, without saying at what temperature.

ICECO VL45 ProS

Trail4Runner’s reviewer scored it 9.6 and called out the easy controls, the lid that opens from either side or comes off, that it sits stable without a slide, and that it is quiet; the one complaint was that the lid is “a bit challenging” for a small child. On Overland Bound, one owner ran a VL45 for a year through humid 90 F heat and freezing cold and as a 0 F garage freezer, holding “within a degree or two of setting” and “a couple degrees warmer near the top”; another has a VL45 ProS on a second battery in a 2004 4Runner “operating flawlessly”; a third had his survive a rear-end collision while running. The tilt rating is 40 degrees. ICECO’s own ProS page lists the Pro’s differences over the plain VL45 as the either-side lid, a USB outlet, a drain plug and a DC socket at each end.

What about the CFX5 45 and the VL45 Plus?

Both fridges have a 2025 or 2026 successor, and you will see both on the same shelf for a while.

The Dometic CFX5 45 is the same 46 litres in the same 398 by 476 by 694 mm box (the CFX5 cover fits the CFX3 45 too), at 41.7 lb, with a VMSO3.5 compressor, vacuum insulated panels and a sheet figure of 0.76 Ah/h on the same 32 C basis, which is about a quarter less than the CFX3’s 1.03. Nomadic Supply’s series comparison says it is 5 dB quieter. Its rated input current is higher, 9.4 amps, so the socket rule above gets tighter, not looser. If a CFX3 45 is discounted next to it, you are buying the same box with a thirstier sheet number and the older app.

The ICECO VL45 Plus is a different idea: 42 litres, 57.6 lb, vacuum panels, the ICECO app with CarPlay, a magnetic 250 Wh battery, and a front door that reaches about 80 percent of the interior without lifting the lid, for fridges that live under a drawer or on top of a stack. Trail4Runner’s July 2026 review scored it 9.4 and said it holds temperature about the same as the earlier models. It launched on Kickstarter, so check the retail warranty terms before treating it as the VL45’s replacement.

Which one, by how you run it?

What to skip

Skip the insulated cover as a power saver. The Wrangler owner’s jacket run came in one point better than bare over 12 hours at room temperature, and he suspects it would do more in heat; buy it to protect the lid and the paint, not for the amp-hours. Skip the plain VL45 if you can stretch to the ProS: the either-side lid and the second DC socket are the parts you use every day. Skip running either fridge from the factory rear socket for more than a night; the voltage drop in that wire is behind the “my fridge shut off” thread above. And skip the sheet-versus-sheet argument on forums: the two numbers are not measured the same way.

FAQ

Is the ICECO VL45 as good as the Dometic CFX3 45?

For keeping food cold on about the same amp-hours, every published figure says yes. The Dometic is lighter and has the app and the better starter-battery cutoff; the ICECO has the longer compressor warranty and the better lid. Neither one has been shown to use meaningfully less power than the other.

Do Dometic and ICECO use the same compressor?

No. ICECO’s VL45 runs a SECOP compressor, the Danfoss lineage. Dometic’s CFX3 sheet names its own VMSO3, and the CFX5 a VMSO3.5. Forum posts claiming they share a compressor are wrong for the CFX3.

How many amp-hours a day does a 45 litre fridge use?

Dometic’s sheet says about 25 amp-hours at 32 C; ICECO’s says about 29 on an unstated basis; one owner’s ICECO on a power station came to about 42 including the station’s own draw. Plan 25 to 40 amp-hours a day for either and you will not be caught out. The sums are in our amp-draw post and the runtime table.

Which battery protection setting should I use?

On a starter battery: Dometic High, or ICECO High with the knowledge that it lets the battery go 0.7 volts lower before it stops. On a LiFePO4 house battery or a power station: Dometic Low, ICECO Medium or Low; all three are under the battery’s own disconnect, so the fridge runs until the battery says stop. Our overnight post covers the starter-battery case in detail.

Will either one freeze?

Both. Dometic prints -22 C (-7.6 F); ICECO prints 0 F. Both are single-zone boxes, so the whole fridge is a freezer or a fridge, not one of each; that is the dual-zone VL60 conversation, and the VL60 ProS is a single zone too.

Are these numbers from a test?

No. Nothing on this page was measured by me. The sheet figures are Dometic’s and ICECO’s, the station reading is one Wrangler owner’s, and the per-day lines are those figures divided by 12 volts. Where a maker prints nothing, the table says so.