Interpretation Continued

I was concerned with the results of my testing and contacted Antec to see if they could provide insight into my temperature findings. Below are the three technical points from Antec:

1) You may not have let the Notebook Cooler run long enough to really notice a significant temperature change. Check the effect over the long term, as the product is intended for users who are working on a laptop for a couple of hours plus. (Few users would bother using a cooler if they were turning their laptop on for just 20-30 minutes).

2) The position of the notebook on the cooler can make a difference, since the CPU is in different places on different models. You may want to experiment with moving the cooler around, and see how that changes the results.

3) The cooling effect depends on the temperature of the notebook to begin with, so a notebook that runs hotter will notice more cooling. You may find different results if you test the unit with a different computer.

After getting the above response from Antec I performed a final test. The graph below shows the temperature with the cooler turned 180 degrees (so the intake/exhaust fans are blowing on opposite sides of the laptop than before) to compensate for cpu placement. The test was also run for a longer period (240 minutes). I did not address #3 above in my testing due to only having one laptop to test.

This test shows a MUCH greater cooling affect of the product, giving an 8C+ difference with/without cooling activated. It also shows that orientation of the device is critical to cooling performance, and in this case, I had to rotate it 180 degrees under the laptop to compensate for the cpu location within the laptop. The temp increases quickly when switched off at 130 minutes...and dropped quickly when switched back on at 200 minutes. What an amazing difference it made to reverse the orientation!--effectively reversing the intake/outake fan locations.

Summary

The Notebook Cooler from Antec is a useful product to cool laptops in certain environments. Antec may want to update its documentation to include the orientation of the cooler in relation to the "hot spot" (i.e. cpu) of the laptop. I can recommend this product to anyone wanting to cool down a laptop used on a desk for long period of time, but it is not designed for actually cooling ON your lap.

Pros

• Attractive design
• Easy setup
• Quiet
• Passthrough USB power connector
• Easy on battery life
• Antec warranty and build quality
• Excellent cooling performance once orientated properly (specific to each laptop model)

Cons

• Product literature should include orientation tips
• Not useful for true laptop use (ON your lap)

Thanks goes to Antec for providing this product for review.