Adding to the novelty effect, inside the USB fridge you'll find a single blue LED to light up the one can interior, the cables to which are stealthily hidden from view in red sheathing. At the base of the interior is a standard cold plate that's similar to what we've seen over a year ago with the USB Beverage Chiller from CoolIT Systems.

The one obvious downside to the enclosure is its in

ability to house any drinks larger than your standard 12oz can. This means you're going to have to just keep on fast-chugging your 500mL water bottles, 16oz "tallboy" energy drinks, 24oz "master cylinder" beer cans, 32oz plastic Taco Bell cups and 10oz glass Bawls bottles, unless of course you're willing to desecrate their sanctity with ice. Ugh. As an alternative coffee drinker that habitually brings in a can of Monster to my day job, this can be quite an issue.

USB Cooling System

Like the CoolIT Chiller and practically all portable refrigeration systems such as those advertised for use in the car, DreamCheeky's USB Fridge employs thermoelectric cooling, based on the Peltier effect. In layman's terms, the Peltier effect is what happens when electrical current is passed through two different metal alloys, causing heat to be transferred from one junction to another, essentially making one side get hot while the other gets cold. While not nearly as powerful or energy efficient as a conventional refrigerator with a compressor, the low cost, size and durability of the thermoelectric cooler has found it a solid niche chilling soft drinks, not to mention cooling our satellites in space.

The effectiveness of the thermoelectric cooler (TEC) is determined by two primary factors: how much electrical current the system is being fed, and how quickly heat can be removed from the hot junction. For the heat removal, an aluminum heatsink (much like what's probably inside your computer) disperses heat from the hot junction, and is aided by a small 80mm fan that sucks air from the bottom of the USB fridge and blows it over the heatsink and out through the vents on the front and back of the unit.

Current draw is the larger of the two issues, since USB is only spec'ed to provide 500mA of juice at 5 volts. Thankfully most desktops and laptops will provide more amperage than this if necessary, but even then the cooling potential will still be inferior to what larger TEC's can accomplish with a car's 12v outlet. And while it didn't happen to my two systems, there's always the potential to overload your USB ports, so it's preferable to play it safe and connect the fridge to a powered USB hub. Contrary to what the manual says, a Mac or PC with 32MB of RAM and 100MB of disk space is not required to power the USB fridge - there's no data connection whatsoever.