Watch as I unbox my iHome Notebook Cooling Pad:). I-Home, Silver, Mac Cooling Pad, 2 Built-In Fans Powered Directly From Your Notebook's USB Port To Provide Continuous Air Flow Under Your Notebook, Prevents Overheating For Maximum Performance, Adjust The Cooling Pad's Width To The Size Of Any Notebook For A Secure Fit, Fits Macbook 13', Macbook Air.
I searched far and wide for a cooling pad suitable for my 11' MacBook Air, but all other models were larger than my laptop itself. When fully collapsed, this cooling pad is just smaller than the profile of my laptop, which is perfect. The design lends itself best for using a laptop on a desk and not in one's lap.
This cooling pad has been remarkably effective for controlling my laptop's temperature. I'm a medical student and have made the switch to an all-digital workflow, meaning I haven't used a single paper book in all of medical school. Instead, I use an 11' MacBook Air for everything, and I use two Apple TVs to power two wireless monitor systems, a 46' and a 22', for video lectures and textbooks while I compute in my notebooks and browser on my laptop. You can imagine how hot my computer gets, straining the video card to run two other monitors. I also keep my laptop on and running at maximum capacity for up to fourteen hours at a time. The two-fan system is essential. My roommate, a third-year MD/PhD student who is also all-digital, uses only one fan.
Though his model is better designed for lap use, it's friggin' huge-and you really shouldn't use your laptop on your lap that much anyhow for ergonomic and other reasons. I've owned several such products over the past few years and all seem to fail after 6-12 months. I've been using this one for about 6 weeks and it's held up for now. The current use is on a 15' MacBook Pro which tends to get fairly hot and the device.does. seem to reduce the heat by a few degrees from almost 'hot' to fairly warm.
Airflow is not great but.is. adequate and the fans are quiet. I was hoping it would expand to fit side-to-side on the computer but it expands vertically. Guess that's OK as it fits well enough to cool. The biggest 'con' currently is the very bright.blue.
power LED. Yes, blue is 'cool' but in the dark it's.very. bright.
Ihome Cooling Pad For Mac
I guess manufacturers haven't latched onto the fact that the human eye sees blue.very. well in the dark and such LEDs on products are far more distracting than 'cool' when the lights are out. The USB power cord also seems overly long.
The cord plugs into the left side of the unit so if your system also has the USB ports on the left you'll be left with excess cord to contain. There's also very little space underneath which means this product will work best on a hard, flat surface -.not. your lap. The air flow to the fans can easily be cut off when placed on your lap, couch, chair, pillow, etc.
Check your USB ports as this device will eat one and provides.no. hub function to restore the one it occupies. A large annoyance was actually with the packaging. It's horribly over packaged but this could be simply for protection as the shell is a.very. light plastic. Generally not bad and fairly typical of such products.
I searched far and wide for a cooling pad suitable for my 11' MacBook Air, but all other models were larger than my laptop itself. When fully collapsed, this cooling pad is just smaller than the profile of my laptop, which is perfect. The design lends itself best for using a laptop on a desk and not in one's lap. This cooling pad has been remarkably effective for controlling my laptop's temperature.
I'm a medical student and have made the switch to an all-digital workflow, meaning I haven't used a single paper book in all of medical school. Instead, I use an 11' MacBook Air for everything, and I use two Apple TVs to power two wireless monitor systems, a 46' and a 22', for video lectures and textbooks while I compute in my notebooks and browser on my laptop. You can imagine how hot my computer gets, straining the video card to run two other monitors. I also keep my laptop on and running at maximum capacity for up to fourteen hours at a time.
The two-fan system is essential. My roommate, a third-year MD/PhD student who is also all-digital, uses only one fan. Though his model is better designed for lap use, it's friggin' huge-and you really shouldn't use your laptop on your lap that much anyhow for ergonomic and other reasons.
I've owned several such products over the past few years and all seem to fail after 6-12 months. I've been using this one for about 6 weeks and it's held up for now. The current use is on a 15' MacBook Pro which tends to get fairly hot and the device.does. seem to reduce the heat by a few degrees from almost 'hot' to fairly warm. Airflow is not great but.is. adequate and the fans are quiet. I was hoping it would expand to fit side-to-side on the computer but it expands vertically.
Guess that's OK as it fits well enough to cool. The biggest 'con' currently is the very bright.blue. power LED.
Yes, blue is 'cool' but in the dark it's.very. bright. I guess manufacturers haven't latched onto the fact that the human eye sees blue.very. well in the dark and such LEDs on products are far more distracting than 'cool' when the lights are out.
The USB power cord also seems overly long. The cord plugs into the left side of the unit so if your system also has the USB ports on the left you'll be left with excess cord to contain. There's also very little space underneath which means this product will work best on a hard, flat surface -.not. your lap. The air flow to the fans can easily be cut off when placed on your lap, couch, chair, pillow, etc. Check your USB ports as this device will eat one and provides.no.
hub function to restore the one it occupies. A large annoyance was actually with the packaging. It's horribly over packaged but this could be simply for protection as the shell is a.very. light plastic. Generally not bad and fairly typical of such products.
I've had this little guy a couple years now and it's still working well on my 13' macbook. I know alot of people say it's only a little air and how can it really make a difference, but I think that it helps my old comp quite a bit. I recently lost the cord though and was afraid I would have to buy a new one.
I looked for cords on amazon tonight, all I can say is that it is definitely NOT a 5.5-2.1 m it is much smaller than that cord. However, my dad happened to have an extra one that fits perfectly, luckily allowing me to avoid wasting money and buying the wrong cord. Thought this info might be helpful if someone is trying to find the replacement cord like I was or is wondering about the cord.
My next step would have been to contact the manufacturer and ask for the specs on the cord. The good: it's small and lightweight, and runs on the computer's power, meaning you don't have to worry about another power cord or batteries. It collapes down even smaller. It gets the job done. The bad: It's clearly not designed for a laptop, at least not one you actually sit on your lap.
The bottom is all plastic ridges and is very uncomfortable on your lap. Also, the fans pull the heat out of your computer, but dump it straight on your legs, so you're in for a sweaty crotch. In the end, I'm not sure about its usefulness. If you have a desktop, you don't need something like this - a conventional fan would work better.
So I guess it works best for a laptop you primarily use on a flat surface, like a table, or a desk. It's too bad they couldn't have included side vents and some padding to make this really handy. Over the years, I've tried a variety of different notebook cooling stands. This iHome unit is one of the noisiest I have ever encountered. Rather than using a single large slow-speed fan (which is typically a lot quieter) this unit uses two small fans spinning at high speed (not adjustable).
In addition to the noise, here are other strikes against this notebook cooler: The tilt angle is not adjustable, so if you find the typing angle awkward, there's nothing you can do about it Takes up a USB port but does not give one back - Many other units I have used also act as a USB hub where they distribute the USB power to additional connectors. On a Mac this is particularly important since we don't get many to begin with. Unfortunately with this unit and a USB mouse, all my ports are taken. Uses a proprietary power cable (USB to a small round connector) so if you ever lose that cable, this unit becomes useless as a cooler. September 3, 2012.
Best Cooling Pad For Macbook Pro
I really wanted this to work. I wanted it to keep my laptop cool and otherwise be a no-hassle product. I am disappointed. The ability to expand the unit vertically is helpful, but the inability to expand it horizontally is not.
A Macbook Pro is much larger than this product. The iHome by Lifeworks Technology IMAC-A300S Mac Cooling Pad is almost all plastic and made in China. It hasn't fallen apart, and I don't know that it ever will under normal use. The covers on the bottoms of the fans are plastic, but the ones on the top are expanded metal, which of course is almost impervious to breakage. It's clunky and fiddly to use whether on your lap or on a bed or even on a desk.
The product can slide around on the surface it's on, and the laptop can slide around on top of the product, which is twice as much sliding (and the necessary subsequent realigning) as I want. And even on a desk it changes the angle at which you're used to typing and operating the touch pad. To use this product, obviously you have to have it wherever your laptop is. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to tote around an object that measures 11-15/16 inches wide by 7-1/8 (shrunken) deep by 3/4 inch at its shortest and 1.05 inches at its tallest. That's 63.8 cubic inches or, as if you didn't know, nearly 2 dry pints. If it were a cube it would be almost exactly 4 inches on a side. If it were a sphere it would be almost exactly 5 inches in diameter.
Oh, and you have to remember to tote around the USB cable, which does fit into a little drawer on the bottom during traveling but which also measures a whopping 35 inches long, which is longer than it needs to be if you're using your laptop to power it but also just maybe long enough to reach your power adapter. What you don't have to tote around is a flashlight, because the blue light that comes on when you plug this baby in is bright enough to light up several feet of a dark and eerie hallway in most ghost-infested haunted houses. Despite the persistent rumors over the last few years, I my own personal self do not believe ghosts are more afraid of blue light than any other color. Because iHome by Lifeworks Technology IMAC-A300S Mac Cooling Pad uses a USB port on your laptop you not only have one fewer USB ports available (duh) but with each moment it's plugged in thereto you have fewer ions in your laptop's battery to Facebook and Tweet and play with Poisson Distribution calculations in your spreadsheet. But the biggest disappointment is that the product under review, whose sole purpose is to cool a laptop, doesn't cool a laptop in any way I've been able to measure, and I have an earlier version one of those thermometers, the, that is both accurate and unusually precise.
For all these failures, some of which are inherent to any competing product but which are nevertheless failures, I award only one star. I would never buy this product. That's not to say I wouldn't test it outside its stated purpose. It does not work underwater.
Moments after you submerge it in a bathtub it stops and never works again, which is irritating because if you're me you have to buy a replacement to continue the off-label testing. It does not work at all well as a mosquito repellant. Several friends and I strapped several of these cooling pads to our various body parts and hung out at a picnic, while several other friends hung out at that very same picnic but, and this is the important part, NOT wearing any of these cooling pads. The conclusion that this product repels mosquitoes is entirely unfounded. I don't subtract any stars for this failure, I just thought you'd want to know. If you leave the iHome by Lifeworks Technology IMAC-A300S Mac Cooling Pad sitting on a bench in the largest mall near me and you then go upstairs and watch and wait, eventually this one kid who kept checking it out will come along and take it, and, if you follow him, you will discover he did not take it for the purpose of turning it in to the lost and found department of the mall as you had hoped but rather that he took it directly to his car and stashed it and then walked calmly back into the mall.
If you are that kid, you might want to know that I have a good description of you, several photographs of you, and a description of your car including your license plate number. This sort of game - baiting a trap to identify a real bad guy and then playing spy - is fun, and it might be the highest and best use for this silver-colored product. Notebook computers can overheat. It isn't a worry when you use your computer sparingly, but it can become a problem with extended usage. This cooling pad was designed to solve the problem by circulating air via two small fans with the power supplied by your notebook's USB.
The movement of air is, supposedly, enough to keep your notebook from overheating or at least lessen the chances. A product like this certainly sounds like a good idea and a practical solution to a problem, but does it really work as promised? Well, it does cause some extra flow of air, as expected, but the cooling effects are minimal.
The main reason is because the flow of air is so light. Turn on the fans and place your hand next to them. You will barely feel anything and this is reason enough to suspect that it makes little difference.
Another thing to keep in mind with this cooling pad is that it will not work if you do not set it up properly. It has to be standing on a flat surface so that the air can flow underneath. If you're the type who holds your notebook on your lap, then a product like this will not work for you.
There has to be space underneath so that the fans can operate and get the air moving. The Mac Cooling Pad does fit securely on Mac's of different sizes and can be used for non- Mac pc's as well. I suppose it could make some difference in temperature, but it seems like a novelty product to me.
Ihome Notebook Cooling Pad For Mac
Unless you are already experiencing an overheated notebook, a product like this is a waste of money.