There's a Chill in Here

Do you have a laptop that tends to run warm? Does the roaring fan drive you crazy? If so, you might want to invest in a laptop cooling pad to help keep it from overheating. While they are traditionally marketed towards computer gamers, nothing is stopping you from using one for your work or personal laptop.

There's a lot of mixed reviews as to whether laptop cooling pads make much of a difference. I can only speak to my personal experience. When I got a new laptop in November, I immediately noticed that it runs warmers than my old laptop. The laptop fan constantly runs, frequently kicking into high gear. I teach a lot of webinars and have remote meetings (this was true even before the pandemic forced us all to work remotely). I worried that people would struggle to hear me over the whirring of the fan. Luckily, I have a noise-canceling headset, which never became a problem, but others may not have such a great headset. Even though it wasn't a problem for my clients, it was driving me crazy.

My colleagues cautioned me against investing in a cooling pad. Cooling pads are just another fan for your laptop - they elevate your laptop over one or more fans. Would adding more fans mean more whirring to drive me crazy? One afternoon, when I was going mad from the noise, I did minimal research and decided to pull the trigger on a pad that was advertised as nearly silent.

The pad, which costs less than $50, runs off a USB port on my laptop. While my USB ports are all already spoken for (and I quickly filled up my four-port USB hub), the one I selected comes with a USB port to replace the one it takes up. Running off USB means no pesky power cords to deal with - I've run out of space for those as well.

The first one I receive spun into life with the click of a button and a horrible clanking noise as one of the fans immediately broke. The other two fans ran nearly silently. Encouraged by the quiet fans that worked, I requested a replacement cooling pad. The replacement worked perfectly. All three fans spin quietly, keeping my laptop cooler.

My laptop fan still runs sometimes (especially when I'm processing video or running a VM), but it never runs at full tilt when the cooling pad is on. If I turn off the cooling pad at night to save electricity, I sometimes find my laptop fan spinning at full speed for no reason. Anecdotal evidence tells me it does make a difference.

You may not need one, but if your laptop fan drives you crazy, a cooling pad is worth the investment.