Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron runs communication and partnerships for All Cool: contact with brands, negotiating reader discounts, keeping an eye on what's new in portable cooling. But the road remains his real home turf. A car enthusiast for as long as he can remember, he saw compressor cool boxes as a natural extension of his world: these units live in the same place as his weekend-mechanic gear, the boot of a car or the back of a van, and have to take the same jolts and the same temperature swings. So he naturally took charge of the site's Cooler section, judging a product by how it performs rather than by what the spec sheet says.

His testing method borrows straight from his road-trip habits. Every compressor cool box goes through the same steps: time needed to reach 0°C and then a negative temperature starting from a room-temperature load, real-world power draw measured on a power station or an auxiliary battery, and noise level checked right next to the compressor, a criterion he thinks many manufacturers underrate once you're sleeping a few centimetres from the unit. He always sets the models under test up in the boot of his own car or a van conversion, engine off, to check they hold up away from a lab bench.

This taste for 12-volt power and the open road is nothing new: on the sister site best-batteries.com, Gilles holds a similar role covering car equipment, jump starters, chargers and auxiliary batteries. The two worlds overlap often enough, a compressor cool box and a battery booster share the same cigarette lighter socket, giving him a rare, joined-up view of onboard power.

Off the clock, Gilles is still a driver at heart: regional rallies and off-road raids punctuate his calendar, often a good excuse to slip a cool box or a prototype into the back for a real-world test. Divorced, he spends his Wednesdays with his daughter, who sometimes tags along to the quieter events. An amateur photographer, he also shoots part of All Cool's product visuals, an eye he sharpened on his own cars before turning it to the site's cool boxes and portable air conditioners.