Cooler Master Notepal P1 Review

[J2T]

Cooler Master Notepal P1 Review




Ok, so I have seen a few of the "notebook" coolers in various online retailers and thought it was an interesting idea, but they never really caught me as something I needed to have. Because honestly, does anyone run their laptop out of spec? Ok, some might, but for the majority a laptop is something portable and not usually overclocked. My laptop sporting a Celeron M doesn't really get all that toasty and since I use it mainly for work I don't toy with it a whole lot since I need something stable. Granted it does get a little warm on my leg when I do use it on the couch (as I am now ). I recently won a Cooler Master Notepal P1 from the good guys at OverclockersOnline and Cooler Master. Now I figured was a good time to give it a go.


The Cooler Master Notepal P1 was waiting on my doorstep when I got home on Friday and I eagerly opened it up to see what I had. There really wasn't a whole lot to the package consisting of just the Notepal P1 and a USB cabled tucked inside...but missing any sort of instructions.

Now granted its a rather simple device with not much to it, but it took a little bit of exploring to figure everything out since the box doesn't even include any instructions, just some specifications and features. One of these annoyances for me was in the simple feature of how to turn it on or off. All the box tells you is that it can be turned off and on, but nothing about how. So after setting it up I began to poke around.

So after plugging in the Cooler Master Notepal P1 and poking around, come to find out you just push in the little silver circle located behind the USB ports to turn it on/off. This also brought up another annoyance with the documentation. The box states that it offers 2 USB ports, but with the USB cable to hook it up taking up one on your laptop and one on the Notepal itself, it really doesn't offer any..you just don't lose any either. I guess thats a good thing, but also a bit misleading.

Now does it work? While I don't have any actual measuring tools to find out how much it cools the laptop (I can't find any monitoring tools that support my laptop ) going by feeling alone it does work. The cooler actually pulls air into the laptop as opposed to expelling more air. Just feeling the exhausted air with my hand I can definately tell the difference in temperature with it on and off. So while it does work, its actual application to me is somewhat flawed. Since it is for a laptop, I would think a way of mounting it to the actual laptop would be a given...its a portable computer. However thats not the case as the laptop just sets down on top of the cooler. This might be due to the fact that no two laptops are alike and therefore makes it difficult to find a mounting solution. The cooler is "portable" in the fact that its rather light and has a little compartment in the bottom to store the USB cable in.

While the product actually works, its not really what I expected. For those that have a laptop as a desktop replacement, this may be the thing for you, but for anyone that likes to tote their laptop around and use it in all different spots of their house or on the go, I just don't see this as a practical solution to use.

I would give this a 6/10 rating.