Safety note: Stop using a recalled unit now rather than after checking. If a minifridge has been smoking, sparking or overheating, unplug it at the wall and do not plug it back in to test whether the problem repeats.
On August 13 the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of about 250,000 Cooluli minifridges, in 10 litre and 15 litre models. The electrical switch can short circuit, which the notice describes as a fire and burn hazard. The recall number is 26-685.1
Cooluli has received at least 19 reports of the units smoking, sparking, burning, melting, overheating or catching fire. Property damage exceeds 80,000 dollars, and one person reported a smoke inhalation injury.1,2
These are the small fridges that sit in bedrooms, dorm rooms and offices, often beside a bed and often running unattended overnight. That placement is the reason this recall is worth two minutes of anyone's attention rather than a glance.1,3
How to tell in under a minute
The identifying feature is physical and does not require finding paperwork. The recalled units have an internal power supply with two power input ports on the back, an AC and a DC port, instead of a single DC port. The removable power cord has no brick-shaped adapter of the kind used with laptop chargers.1
The precise check is a label inside the door, which carries the model number, printed as ITEM, and the batch number. The recall covers batch numbers 1535 through 1545 and 1200000 through 1202080.1
Colour is no guide at all. The affected units were sold in black, blue, green, white and red, and with multicoloured patterns, photographs and logos, across the Infinity, Classic, Glow Beauty and Vibe series. Cooluli is printed on the front.1
Where they came from
They were sold on Amazon and on Cooluli's own website from January 2019 through October 2024, for between 80 and 120 dollars. That is a nearly six year sales window, which means a substantial number of these are now second-hand, inherited, or bought for a student by someone who no longer remembers the purchase.1,2
The manufacturer is Ningbo Iceberg Electronic Appliance Co., Ltd., of China, and the importer is Lisse USA LLC, of Brooklyn, New York.1
The CPSC notice lists four related recalls of minifridges and beauty fridges for comparable short-circuit hazards, including Frigidaire-branded units from Curtis International and Paris Hilton beauty fridges from Epoca International. This is a recurring failure in an entire product category, not one unlucky brand.1,3
The remedy, and why it is more work than usual
The CPSC instruction is to stop using the recalled minifridge immediately and contact Cooluli for a free replacement power cord. There is no refund and no replacement unit in the notice. The fix is a cord and a sticker.1
The procedure has several steps, and it is worth knowing them before starting rather than discovering them halfway through.1
- Enter the model and batch numbers at the Cooluli product notices page to confirm the unit is included.
- Unplug the minifridge.
- Cut the power cord off. This is part of the instruction, not an alternative to returning it.
- Submit photographs to Cooluli showing the model and batch numbers.
- Cooluli sends a replacement DC power cord and a permanent sticker to cover the AC port.
The recall nobody hears about
Recall notices reach the people who read recall notices. They do not reach the student whose fridge was bought by a parent four years ago, or the person who picked one up at the end of a lease for twenty dollars. There is no registration for an eighty dollar appliance, which means the only route to most owners is somebody telling them.1,3
That makes this one of the few situations where forwarding a link is genuinely the useful action. A household with a student in a dorm, an office with a fridge under a desk, a spare room with a beauty fridge on the dresser: those are the specific places these units sit, running continuously, usually within a few feet of somebody sleeping.1,2
The CPSC also runs a free email alert service for new recalls, and signing up costs a minute. It is the same category of small dull task as opting into an emergency alert system, and it fails in the same way, which is that nobody does it until the reason to have done it has already passed.1
What the remedy tells you about the fault
A sticker that permanently covers the AC port is an unusually legible piece of engineering. The hazard is tied to the two-input design, and the fix is to make one of those inputs unusable forever while supplying a cord for the other. Read that way, the remedy is a description of the defect.1,2
The cut-the-cord requirement is standard practice in recalls of this kind. It ensures a unit cannot be quietly resold or passed on, which matters most for exactly the sort of cheap appliance that circulates through second-hand listings at the end of every academic year.1,3
The number worth holding on to is 19. Nineteen households reported smoke, sparks or fire, and that was enough to pull 250,000 units. Reports from ordinary owners are the mechanism by which this system works, and a fridge that behaved oddly once and was never reported is the reason these recalls take years to arrive.1,2
Sources and method
All recall details, including model description, batch ranges, incident counts, damage figures and the remedy procedure, come from the CPSC notice for recall number 26-685, dated August 13. The CPSC website blocks automated requests, so the notice was opened and read directly in a browser during fact-checking rather than retrieved by our link checker. Quartz and Food Poisoning Bulletin reported the recall independently on August 14.
- Cooluli recalls 10-liter and 15-liter minifridges due to fire and burn hazards U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission · August 13, 2026 · primary
- Cooluli recalls 250,000 minifridges over fire and burn hazards Quartz · August 14, 2026 · independent
- Cooluli minifridges recalled for fire and burn hazards Food Poisoning Bulletin · August 14, 2026 · independent