Watoor freezer drops its set-point (the -40 F bug) after a power cut

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shirasu893

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If you own a Watoor -40-degree freezer, this is worth a test. Set it below 0 degrees, pull the plug for a minute, then reconnect it. Wait an hour or two and read the display. Chances are the number has climbed past your set-point.

In my case, the culprit is any brief interruption in power: the unit abandons your chosen set-point and falls back on the factory default of 0 degrees F. Holding down the +/- keys puts it back onto the value you picked, though. I reported this to Watoor and they sent a replacement (telling me to hang onto the first one) - yet the new unit misbehaved in exactly the same way. In the end they refunded what I paid and let me keep both freezers. My only complaint is that the hardware is nowhere near as dependable as their support team.

My hunch is that Watoor is simply a rebadged unit - several near-identical boxes are sold under other brand names, and I would bet they share the same firmware flaw. Then again, it might only affect boxes built recently. Either way, I would love for another member to run the test and post the result.

So, my question: does anyone know of another compact chest-freezer that is affordable and actually gets cold enough (at least -20-degrees F)?
 
Not something I own, but it has been on my radar. The lowest I have managed to find on a normal freezer is -11F, or -20C if you are reading a metric spec. Plenty of units advertised as -20 are quoting Celsius, and that is also the figure people cite for peptides kept long term. Currently I am eyeing one from Whynter - the 1.1 Cu. Ft. Upright Freezer with Lock - street price under $200, runs on a normal 110V AC outlet, and the internal mechanical thermostat dial takes it down to -11F.

A genuine lab-grade unit is a different budget entirely - think Stirling, where new prices run into the thousands and even second-hand units sit near $1000. That is the extent of my research; I have not dug any deeper.
 
Right now my garage fridge/freezer sits somewhere between -4 and -9 this time of year. The coldest the memory has logged is -13, probably from last winter when we got real freezes around 30* here. I wiped the log to get a fresh reading.
 
At Costco I spotted a chest freezer, 2.1 cu ft, with free shipping. The manual I downloaded says it holds -7 to -11 degrees F once the dial is at 7.




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The same unit is stocked at Home Depot.
 
The look of it makes me wonder whether this is the same as the Northair series I had my eye on? Hmm. I was thinking about the 1.8cf models (small enough to tuck under my desk). A Cyberpower UPS of mine should carry it through brief power losses, I reckon. Outside of this "rebadged by everyone" range, there is not much choice at -40f.
 
Picked up a little 2.0 cuft top-load chest freezer from Amazon over prime days...$160...a digital temp monitor sits inside it and it has been holding -22C the whole day. No defrost cycles...
 
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