Antec Notebook Cooler Review

Below is my personal review of the Antec Notebook Cooler. I have an extremely powerful laptop which generates a tremendous amount of heat from constantly processor involving multimedia tasks, so I set out on a search for a nice laptop cooler.

Reason for a laptop cooler

I have a very demanding profession, in that I am required to do a lot of video, audio, and image creation & editing. It becomes very quickly apparent that the laptop keyboard becomes overpoweringly hot. This is not only true for my current Desknote laptop, but my 3 others, 2 icebook laptops and an older PC laptop also become extremely warm after just about 2 hours of continuous workload. To try to reduce heat generated, I wanted a nice laptop cooler solution. I was looking for something which would not take up too much space and be portably slim enough to throw into my laptop bag. When I began looking in mid 2003, this seemed to be a new concept, and only a handful of laptop cooler solutions were available. Initially I purchased something called the coolpad on E-Bay. Price range was about $30 at the time, and it ran on AC power. Eventually I purchased a really well designed USB powered aesthetically pleasing unit called the Antec notebook cooler.

Reasons for purchase

My reasons for purchasing the Antec cooler were because the previous non USB coolpad failed in its purpose. Constant carrying and handling the plastic coolpad had an effect on the 3 plastic non ball bearing fans, and they quickly stopped spinning. Efforts to try to take apart the cooler and free the fans manually worked for a while. But there was just too little clearance, and one of the fans would constantly get stuck when the heavy laptop was placed on it. Eventually the AC connector failed. This seems to be a constant problem in many of my devices. Power supply is not well thought out, usually being supplied by a very small pin. This pin either breaks or just stops making proper contact. The coolpad was a good idea, just very inexpensively made out of plastic parts, and not meant to withstand the rigors of a mobile environment. The coolpad experience lasted about 6 months, during which time new laptop cooler innovations came into the market.

Designs became better, and much more heavy duty ball bearing fans came into usage. And geared toward the mobile user, power finally came via USB connectors. This makes a lot more sense for a laptop, because realistic usage of a laptop happens in places where no AC current is available. Nonetheless, this USB power cable is a very small pin at one end and a USB cable at the other end. I was at once struck with the innovative design of the Antec notepad cooler. Yes, it had ball bearing fans, and yes it had a USB power supply, but what caught my eye was the interesting curved design with rubber grips at the bottom. Although I am usually very logical when it comes to hardware purchase, this Antec buy was very much based on really cool looking design.

Out of the Box

The Antec laptop cooler is a very sturdy instrument. It feels rugged and solid. Its curved design is a conversation piece anywhere. The ball bearing fans are very powerful, but the spinning power yeilds a slight bit of noise. There is a USB power pin connector next to the starting switch and power led. Usage is extremely simple, just plug in the pin connector and power via a USB port. An incredibly valuable design is using the pass through feature of the USB cable. USB cable specifications call for 4 wires, 2 of which supply power, and the other 2 which allow data to pass through. This Antec device has the foresight not to block one USB port, by creating the pass through USB cable, which keeps the USB port free. I have 4 USB ports on my laptop, and during peak usage, I can use all 4 ports, and because of the pass through functionality, I can have 5 usb devices running.

Reflections over two years of usage

I have had the Antec device for over 2 years now. I wrote an article on ePinions, extolling its virtues. The laptop cooler is so efficient and seamless in what it does, that I purchased a second one for my icebook mac laptop. Engineers seem to have reached a limit when it comes to heat dissipation of laptops. No matter how much the fan capacity is, under duress and heavy processor usage, with confined desk space, an enormous amount of heat is generated from the components of a laptop. My white apple iBook is no exception. At only 500 Mhz processor speed, the bottom of the laptop gets very hot to the touch within 1/2 hour. Although the Antec laptop cooler cannot dissipate all its heat, I am very pleased at the reduction in temperature. I have installed a software temperature monitor on my PC laptop, and noticed a nearly 17 degree average Fahrenheit drop in temperature when using the laptop cooler. This is a very extreme range, and will vary on the surface used and the amount of airflow around any laptop cooler.

Additional Observations

Like many of my other electronic components, the laptop cooler became useless very quickly due to extremely bad power connector design. One week after I purchased my first Antec cooler the power connector lost contact. This was no doubt related to my real world usage, where I moved the unit and stored it in a bag for travel to and from work. I bought another one immediately, and kept the first in storage, thinking that I could still use both, just have one power connector cable. Within 6 months the second one also began to stop working, for the same power pin connector issue. I explained the issue to customer service at Comp USA where I purchased these, and the customer service representative was very understanding. I don't expect any customer service person to be this respectful of hardware, but this person was interested in getting one for himself, and appreciated the insight into the power connector issue.

Frankly it comes down to being able to relate to people in customer service, and his generosity over those 2 $60 coolers kept me going back and purchasing from that store for years. In total I've probably spent a few thousand dollars there since those returns. But after returning the product, I went about a week without the coolers, and realized that the cooling effect of the unit was really something I had learned to appreciate over time. So I purchased 2 more. And within 6 months, these too lost their power connection.

I would not recommend someone do this, but I liked these Antec units enough to take them apart and spice cables in order to get it to work. After a couple of trips through the Google Search Engine, I learned about the functionality of the 4 cables within a USB power cord. After cutting my USB connector supplied with this unit, I cut rubber enough to reach bare wire. I then removed the controller circuit which included the LED light and power switch. Instead of connecting to this controller board, I connected the USB pass through cable directly to the fans. Now I don't have any lights telling me about the power status and I can't use a switch to turn off the fans. But they work. And they do their job. Please note, if you decide to do this, you will take risks with your equipment which cannot be reversed.

Final Words

I highly recommend that anyone who has a laptop invest in some sort of cooling mechanism I am impressed by the Antec notebook cooler sturdiness in a portable environment, and thier aesthetic design. But power connection is an issue. My own solution to power was to remove their flimsy connectors and splice directly to the fans to force functionality.

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