Is my most EXPENSIVE car camping gear WORTH IT?

Hello and welcome, my name is Grace and for the past year and a half I have traveled full-time out of a Toyota 4Runner. I did recently add a new addition, a five-month-old Belgian Malinois named Zora. She is hiding out of frame right now but I'm sure that at some point she will jump in frame and steal my thunder. If you'd like to see her in some vlogs, I do have some that have been recently posted. There she is. But without further ado, let's get into today's video. About a year ago I made a video talking about my favorite inexpensive car camping gadgets. It did fairly well and so I decided that it's been long enough and I better make one talking about the most expensive products that I have in my car for car camping. And more importantly, whether or not I think they are worth the money. I do want to offer a slight disclaimer, this is going to be a relatively short video so if you want a lot of details on these products, I'm sure there are a bunch of review videos posted. But this is just going to be the high-level overview of whether or not these products do well every single day in the car. Let's start off with my most expensive product and that is my power station. It is a Goal Zero Yeti 3000X. It is a massive battery and it retails for about $3,500 on Goal Zero's website. Definitely an expensive purchase. So is it worth it? I have had great luck with this battery. It works in the cold, it lasts a very long time because it has about 3,000 watt hours and it is plug and play. So it was very easy to add to the car setup and just immediately use. Now let's jump into the cons a little bit. Like I said earlier, it is massive. I'm able to forget about it for about two weeks before I have to charge it. I don't have a solar setup. But once that two-week period is up, it is an absolute beast to charge. It takes me about 12 to 14 hours of sitting someplace if I want to take it from zero to 100% and it's just not fun. Also, I have never had any luck with the app telling me what percent it's on or any information about the battery. I've tried to set it up multiple times. I've never had good luck with Zero's app. So that's a con in my opinion. And lastly, it is stupid expensive. $3,500. I'm not saying you don't get what you pay for, but it's pretty expensive. There are some cheaper alternatives on the market. So all of this information combined, I would probably have to say that the Goal Zero Yeti 3000X is going to be a no. One caveat to that as a full-time car camper, I do like having that extra capacity. I think whatever power station setup I choose in the future, it will have the capability to be definitely more than 2,000 watts. Alright, the second product on the list is the Dometic CFX345. This is my refrigerator. It retails for about $1,050. I did get this on sale through REI and I definitely recommend waiting for a sale on this product because it will happen. Let's talk about the pros and there are a lot. First of all, it has extremely low power consumption. I rarely see this thing pulling power. It's also very quiet when it does, so I don't ever really notice it. Also, I've noticed that the insulation in it is pretty good. So if I want to unplug my fridge from my power station while I charge my power station at the park or at a coffee shop, I'm able to do so and not worry that my food is going to go bad on me. I also find that Dometic's app works extremely well for controlling the temperature on the fridge. I have my fridge underneath my mattress, which means that it's kind of challenging to get to the controls to turn the temperature up or down. So having that ability to go into the app and change it to whatever I want is awesome. And the last couple of things I want to touch on for the pros, it does have awesome temperature control. So whatever I set the temperature at, I can almost guarantee it's going to be pretty darn close to that temperature. Additionally, it cools down super fast. It's easy to clean, and in my opinion, it's a great size. I have the 45, so it's kind of middle of the pack for the Dometic fridges. If I go any bigger, I'm looking at getting a dual zone. I would like a dual zone, but I just don't have the space for it. So for me, the size is perfect. I can't go any bigger. I wouldn't go any smaller. As for the cons, there's one. Everybody talks about it when they're talking about this fridge. It's a real struggle sometimes. It's hard to close. You have to really push on that thing to get it to close all the way. Not the end of the world. I have stuffed a bunch of food in there and really had to jam that fridge top down, and it did stay closed once I got it closed, but it wasn't easy. As you can probably guess, I definitely would give this product a yes. That unintentionally rhymed. Next on the list is the Katabatic Gear Flex 15 quilt. This is a backpacking quilt that retails for about $430. If you are vertically challenged like myself, you get to take advantage of that $430 quilt. If you are not so vertically challenged, you'll be paying just a little bit more. I think they run up to about $480 for the super tall wide ones, so don't worry. They accommodate everybody, but there might be a slight price increase. Let's dive into some of the pros. First up, it is extremely warm. It is technically rated to 15 degrees. If you are not familiar with sleeping bag or quilt ratings, the temperature listed is the survival temp. So I technically would survive in 15 degree weather with the quilt that I have. Would I be comfortable? No. Oftentimes the comfort temperature is significantly higher than the survival temp. That being said, the katabatic quilt has taken me down to negative 9 degrees in the car, so it was a little bit warmer than the outside temp and I was toasty warm. As you probably know, if down gets wet, it loses its insulating properties. However, the quilt that I have has a water repellent fabric and it also has hyper dry feathers inside of it. So what I've found is that even on the coldest nights whenever I have condensation buildup inside the car and on top of the quilt surface, I have stayed warm all night. And lastly, as one might expect for a $430 quilt, it has been very durable even with this one in the car. I don't have anything negative to say about this product, so it is going to be a definite yes for me. Let's talk about the Exped Megamat Duo M. This retails for $329.95 and it is the mattress that I use. Pros. Zora is on it almost all day and her nails don't affect it. She's chomped down on it a couple times and it hasn't created any leaks. So I've been very impressed with how durable it is. It is also extremely warm and rated down to negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I think that this is one of the aspects that people forget about when choosing a mattress. A lot of people want to go the inexpensive route and choose just a simple foam mattress that they cut to the right size, but what they don't consider is the fact that that will freeze and turn into a giant ice cube in the cold. So if you'd like to stay warm and comfortable, I definitely would recommend this mattress. I have had great luck with it and the only issue that I've had is that if there is a large temperature difference, it will lose some air. So if you really get your car nice and toasty before you go to bed, don't be surprised if you wake up in the morning and it has lost some air. I do not have any experience deflating and packing up this mattress because I leave mine inflated 100% of the time. However, I have heard that it can be challenging, so keep that in mind if that's a priority. And lastly, be sure to check the size and measurements before you purchase this for your car because I have heard that it will not fit the forerunner with the seats folded flat. So keep that in mind if you found me because of forerunners and you like this mattress. Measure first. All of this considered, I do love this mattress and it is a lot more comfortable than the backpacking mattress that I used for six months. So is it worth the $330? I would say it is. And the final item I have on the list is the Camp Chef Everest 2X. It retails for $189.99 and it is the stove that I used for much of my travels. This is the one item I no longer have in the car. As I got the dog, I lost a lot of space and I had to chop some items, so this was on the chopping block. But let me tell you why. First of all, the stove worked great. It was super powerful. It protected against the wind really well. It boiled fast. It had great temperature control. I could simmer stuff. I could boil stuff. No problems with the functionality. The only downside to the stove is it is massive. It is bulky and heavy and just takes up so much space in the rig. While I would say it is worth the cost and it works great, I have to give this a no just because it takes up too much space in my setup. I definitely would recommend some type of stove setup though. So if I was going to do this again and spend a bunch of money, I would probably look at the Jetboil Genesis. Since I have not modified my forerunner in any way, these are the five most expensive pieces of my car camping setup. Hopefully this video gave you some insight if you're considering purchasing one of these items. If you have additional questions, as always, leave them down in the comments below or you can reach out to me on Instagram. Sometimes that's the better method. Thank you guys for watching and I will see you in the next video!