DataStor UNBCPX Three-Fan Notebook Cooling Pad
by DataStor
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of DataStor UNBCPX Three-Fan Notebook Cooling Pad
Customer Review: It is worth the $16.78 that I paid
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this "DataStor UNBCPX 3-Fan Notebook Cooling Pad" product on the afternoon of Saturday, 6/21/08 and it arrived on Monday, 6/30/08. I live in San Diego, CA. I purchased it as a "ships from and sold by Amazon.com" product.
Yes, it has a silver-colored plastic housing that makes it look and feel cheap. But the plastic housing also makes it incredibly lightweight, probably just a few ounces, and I am glad it will not add any noticeable weight when I carry it in my laptop case.
The product dimensions listed in the description are wrong. The cooling pad is smaller than described. It is just under 12" wide and just over 9" deep. With its original feet, it is approximately 0.5" tall.
The cooling pad has an on/off switch (but please be aware that the fans will not run when your computer is turned off). The black USB connector unplugs from the cooling pad, and the connector has an approximately 20.5" long cable.
The fans are not silent, but I do think that they are very quiet. The fan openings are approximately 2.25" wide.
The cooling pad has eight feet on its bottom surface (round black ones) that seem to be made of hard foam - one in each corner, and one in the center of each edge. Each of the bottom feet hides a recessed screw. There are also two hard foam feet on the top surface of the cooling pad - one in each back corner. The feet only serve effectively as surface protectors. They do not prevent sliding. I have replaced all of the original feet with clear rubber feet (the round ones that you would use under a glass table top), so now the cooling pad does not slide around on my desk, and my laptop does not slide around on top of the cooling pad.
I have a 15" Apple PowerBook G4 with a titanium housing. The worst hot spot is in the back right corner. Prior to this computer I had an old 12" iBook (circa 2001) with a plastic housing. The iBook never seemed to get very hot. I purchased this used PowerBook about three weeks ago and was shocked at how hot it got, especially when I played a DVD or watched internet videos. I was worried that my PowerBook was defective (nearly demanded that the seller refund my money), but all three of my siblings have titanium PowerBooks and they assured me that this model just runs really hot. I was still very concerned that the intense heat would mar the surface of my desk, so I bought this cooling pad because it had the best overall customer reviews on Amazon, and because it has fans in the back corners.
My PowerBook is 13.5" wide, so it is wider than the cooling pad. In order to make the best use of the fan closest to the hot spot, I have positioned my laptop over to the left. I added rubber feet to the front corners of the top surface of the cooling pad. Even with my laptop over to the left, it is completely stable. It does not tilt or slide. I have to lift it up to move it.
Now even when my PowerBook is working hard it does not get burning hot like it did before I started using the cooling pad. It still gets warm, but the cooling pad makes a huge difference. I definitely recommend this product, especially considering its low, low price.
One more tip: I wanted to buy a wrist rest to place in front of my laptop/cooling pad combo, but most of them are way longer than the width of my laptop (usually 18-21" long). So, I purchased two short ones (approximately 6.75" long) and put them side-by-side. Together, they are the perfect length. The ones I bought are manufactured by 3M. The product number is WR305LE. They are called "Gel Wrist Rest with Antimicrobial Product Protection."
Customer Review: Good for stationary use, but cheap and no customer support/parts.
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this some time ago because my laptop was getting hot and bugging me. I spent a lot of time searching for a solution and decided to try this.
First: the thing works. It does cool down my laptop. The little fans seem to work great for what I have and it fits all the way across the bottom (the only problem for me is that my laptop's hotspot required me to flip the unit in reverser, but it worked out). I have no problem with that.
My problems with this unit stem from the complete lack of customer support and the exceptionally shoddy build. It's made of the cheapest plastic I've ever seen, which wouldn't be a problem if the USB cord that comes with the unit weren't also the cheapest-made bundle of wires and plastic coating. Within a few weeks the USB cord started to get wonky, cutting out power unless I moved it a certain way. Then, not long after that, the plastic covering over wires pulled off both ends so it was exposing the wires. Then, the cord died. I was lucky that I had an A/C adapter that fit the plug size for the unit, but that's getting old and is starting to act up as well.
In any case, contacting customer support doesn't do much good. They don't even dignify you with a response telling you they can't replace the power cord, so the unit is mostly useless, since the plug size is not a normal size for A/C (it's some older size that they don't really make anymore and you'll have to buy one of those fancy A/C adapters w/ the multiple plugs to be able to use it, which will cost you as much as buying a new unit anyway...).
So, after all that, I'd say this: If you're looking for a unit that will sit on your desk and you'll just flip it on and off and never move it, then this will do the trick. But if you need something you can move around, shift about the house, take with you places, etc., then this unit will not last you very long. The power cord happens to be exceptionally cheap, so it'll last shorter than the unit itself, and then you can't get a replacement.
Keep that in mind when considering this.
Customer Review: Does Not Work
Summary: 2 Stars
Maybe it's just the kind of laptop I have (Toshiba Satellite, which mine gets really hot because of its bad design), but this does not work for me. I have SpeedFan on my laptop (tells you the temperature inside your laptop), and without letting my laptop get so hot that it automatically shuts off...it's the only way I could think to see if this product actually worked. The temperature on SpeedFan actually goes up approximately 3-5 Celsius every time I turn this pad on. If I arrange the pad so that none of its fans are directly under my laptop's fan, then the temperature remains roughly the same as if the pad is off (i.e. less than when the pad is on). The only real utility I get from this pad is, since I use my laptop on cushion-y surfaces all the time like the bed and blankets, having a hard pad (turned off) underneath my laptop keeps the air flow from getting smothered by those soft cushions--those cushions raise the temperature inside my laptop and eventually result in my laptop shutting off. But as far as my laptop going up to 60 or even 70 Celsius while just trying to watch videos online sometimes...this does not totally help with that, no matter what I try. I would have liked to be able to watch videos with my laptop's power settings on "high performance," (not to mention keep my AC adapters from frying to death--I've had two die with this laptop since getting it a year and a half ago) but the temperature still gets way too hot to be able to do that. The only way it won't go into the 60s or 70s is if I keep it on "power saver," which oftentimes will make the videos run slower/choppily.
Guess I will be looking for a better cooling pad.
Customer Review: Thin, Light, Quiet, Inexpensive and Effective
Summary: 5 Stars
I've only had it for a day. I selected this cooling pad because of the 3rd fan located front and center. That is where my Dell D600 Latitude's hot spot is. This unit is light plastic, with corrugated ribs for provide channels for airflow. The 3 flat fans pull air from the surface of the pad and blows it out the back. The 9/16" thin pad back edge is mostly open space to exhaust air from under a notebook. Fan speed is low, which is why its so quiet. The construction is on the light side so I will be handling this carefully. The power plug is USB on one end and 1/8" round plug on the other end of the 30" cord. The round power plug fits in a socket on the right side. A slide switch on the front center edge turns the unit on with 3 green LED's, presumably one for each fan, indicating the unit is powered up. Pretty simple.
My laptop builds up a lot of heat and the desk surface at my docking station got very warm. The laptop heats up as airflow to bleed off the excess heat is almost non existant in the thin crack of a space between the laptop bottom and desk surface, created by the rubber bumber feet of the laptop. At times it got so hot, the electrons got heatstroke and wandered around aimlessly as the machine slowed to a crawl and hungup. The airflow removes heated air and keeps the laptop from creating global warming under it due to trapped air. My laptop no longer heats up like it did. This is a great little cooler. I use it at home and at work. Lightweight, but does the job.
Customer Review: Get something else
Summary: 1 Stars
Dimensions for what I received are different. I paid for one-day shipping and it took four days just for it to ship. Then another two days from there before I actually received it (no missed deliveries)
The material is a very thin and cheap plastic. The fan "grills" are also plastic, and they're very thin. It takes very little pressure (or a heavier laptop) to push the top into the fan, which makes an irritating sound and horribly reduces the performance. 3 fans or 50, it doesn't matter if they're not spinning.
This is worse than the cooling pad I was replacing, which at least lasted for six months before breaking.
Spend the extra $10 and get something else. This is absolutely horrible. I'm half tempted to return this and start a dispute for the transaction regarding this, as I paid extra for speedier shipping and did not get it at all. The quality of this Made in China product is not worth $20.
As for how well it cools? It's made of plastic and has three small fans. There's nothing to actually do anything about a hot laptop bottom, and unless your hot spots are right where the fans are located then this is a completely useless product.
Only reason I'm giving it a 1 is because it actually turns on.