Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had high hopes when I opened the box. The device was light, sleek and attractive (for a laptop cooler). Unfortunately, I immediately discovered some major flaws. I plugged the device into my Lenovo Thinkpad R40 which tends to run hot. There is no mention of this on the Amazon product page, but there is no A/C power adapter included. The product is designed to draw power directly from your laptop via a split, dual USB cable included with the unit. If your laptop is short on free USB ports, this could be a deal breaker. You can use one or both USB leads to power the cooler. They recommend using both for "maximum cooling," but I only detected a slight difference in the max fan speed when using both USB leads as opposed to using only one (that was while the laptop was plugged into a/c power - there might be a more discernible differerence on some laptops, especially if running from battery power). But that is the least of your concerns. The cooler has a small, on/off/speed adjustment dial on the right-front side near a tiny, bright, white LED light to let you know when the unit is on (at least theoretically). I turned the switch so it clicked on and the three 80mm x 10mm fans spin up for a split second and then they stop. They stopped? Yes, they stopped. Hence the unit's first major flaw. The fans will only actually run at medium to max speed. Instead of the fans running slowly and silently and then steadily increasing in speed as you turn the dial, I had to turn the dial to max to get the fans to spin up at all and then dial it back to get any speed other than stop or max. Even then, if you dial it back too far, the fans will just stop. There really isn't a slient, low speed. I say they are cheapy made fans because of the second major flaw - the fans on my unit buzz, whir and generally make noise. One of the three fans on my unit even sounds like it's completely unbalanced to the point where it actually makes a clicking noise at lower speeds. At max RPM, the fans all straighten up and spin right, but they are noisy fans at max RPM. They make your laptop sound almost like a desktop pc. Even at max RPM, the cooling provided by this mat is again limited by the fact that the fans are only moving air in a straight line of 80mm x 280mm as the three fans are all lined up in a row close to the rear of the unit. This is the third major flaw. If your laptop generates heat or has air intakes in the front, the middle or just nowhere near the main area of airflow in the rear, the Chill Mat will be far less effective for you. It will provide some amount of cooling, but less than I had hoped. Also note that the description boasts that the "Grill is constructed of anodized 2040 aluminum alloy" - but it is only a very thin, surface layer of aluminum bonded to plastic. 90+% of this unit is plastic. Again, attractive, but not made of aluminum. In my opinion, the flaws are unacceptable for a $60 laptop cooler. The average person may not even realize that the fans have stopped spinning at a low setting when they are expecting this unit to reliably cool their laptop, let alone an expensive "gaming" laptop. It only works reliably at or near max rpm and then the unit produces a lot of noise. Even then, it will typically provide only very limited cooling due to the small area in which the fans operate. I don't think I would recommend this product.