The NEW Design Will BLOW Your Mind (and Laptop)!
Written: Feb 06 '08 (Updated May 15 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Thicker, stronger, more effective, and better overall design from the old style
Cons: Noisier than the old style, variable performance based on location of use, weak connections
The Bottom Line: A chill pad is definitely better than none at all. Despite the few drawbacks, the redesigned Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat is a huge improvement over it's predecessor.
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| wsmunch's Full Review: Targus Tornado Notebook Chill Mat (Pa248u) |
A year and a half ago, when I acquired my Acer Tablet PC, I invested in the Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat, easily the best $20 one could ever spend to protect both a lap and laptop. From a sales point of view, it's a lot easier to convince a customer to spend money on a chill mat than a service plan. The product is tangible and the value is immediate. It only takes a couple of minutes to demonstrate the heat difference between two displayed laptops, one with a chill mat and one without.
So what's the point? Easy. The Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat:
- Protects your lap from the notebook's underbelly heat
- Cools your notebook's hardware and prolongs it's lifespan
- Maintains processing power and extends battery life
A laptop will take a dip in both processing power and battery life when it has to kick up it's internal fans to self-cool. A chill mat uses zero processing power and far less energy to keep the system cooled. It draws power from your laptop via the USB connection. Electronic components subject to continual and/or excessive heat are much more likely to stop functioning. That is the last thing any PC owner wants to have happen to their expensive equipment. My original Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat, that I had purchased a couple of years ago, broke, and I didn't wait for more than a few days to replace it with a new one. It so happens that Targus had gone and revamped the unit with huge improvements!
The new model, keeping the same manufacturer product number with the old, has significant, upgraded changes to performance and looks. The slim, silver unit (which may be available through internet sales but is no longer sold in retail stores) has been replaced with a sturdier, sleeker, gray & black design (the style I am reviewing, now sold in retail electronics everywhere).
Positive Upgrades
While the old design worked well enough for me, the issues it had have been addressed in the redesign. The new chill mat is twice as thick so it doesn't feel and act so flimsy, even if the plastic material is still lightweight. The new design has a concave taper on the sides, which makes it easier to grab just the laptop and leave the mat in place (especially for the standard 15" laptop size). The rubber feet on the mat are wider, thicker, and set in a way that won't let them detach or peel off (like many other users, mine had fallen off by the end of the first week). The mat elevates the rear end of the laptop ever so slightly, to allow for better, ergonomic typing posture when it's being used on a flat surface. The new fans are larger, more effective, and easier to clean due to the double-opening design, which also prevents dust from collecting so quickly. The old design had air intake vents on the back of the mat, which drew in air for the fans to push upwards. Dust would eventually gather around the inside edges of the fan compartment because the fans were halfway enclosed. Given enough time without any cleaning, you would have some pretty big dust-bunnies living in between the fan blades. They were somewhat of a pain to remove unless you let them get big enough where they stop the actual fan movement all together (been there, did that, learned from it). The new design has the fans open to both the top and bottom. Despite having eight smaller side-vents (four on each side), the majority of the air flow comes directly up through the fans, which greatly improves the cooling performance. If you sit cross-legged with the notebook & mat on your lap, you will feel the inner part of your legs start to get cold as the air flows past your body to the mat. A deficiency of the old style was that it had a thin, plastic grating covering over the fan blades. A laptop, heavier or not, set in a certain way would press down on the grating, which would press down on the fan itself and stop it from moving. The old grating style was very easy to break (it actually did on mine, and I had to remove part of it). The new Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat has a thick grating covering both sides of the fans, so laptop weight and design isn't a problem for fan rotation. The new unit's power button is located on the mat itself, instead of on a dumb switch in the middle of the USB connection cord.
New Drawbacks
The first problem with the newly designed Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat is the cooling effectiveness when it's not on a flat surface. I like to sit on the couch/bed with my laptop, sometimes with blankets and/or pillows. When cloth goes flush with the bottom of the mat, the fans rely on the side vents more for air intake. The problem is that the internal fan casings have only small slivers of space to allow air flow from that direction. Depending on how well air passes through the material covering the fans, users will experience a reduced amount of cooling up to and over fifty percent (not a scientific quantity). It's a huge difference that you can tell immediately. All you have to do is set the laptop & mat on a thick blanket, lift the laptop up to feel the airflow, and then lift both the laptop & mat to feel the air flow. While some cooling is better than none, the performance is definitely variable depending on the working surface.
The second problem with the newly designed Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat is the connection quality. The old model's power connection was short and plugged in flush to the mat. Unfortunately, the internal connection itself ended up being weak, and mine wore out due to too much jostling. The new model has an unnecessarily long plug that doesn't even fit flush and secure with the mat. Not only does it have a huge amount of wiggle room, but it sticks out so far that I fear an accidental bump will bend and break the pin, rendering the mat useless. The plug itself protrudes out an inch and can't be seen while the laptop screen is up, so I have to be very conscious of positioning when I am readjusting my comfort.
The third problem with the newly designed Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat is that more power brings on more noise. The new mat is louder than most performing laptops and is definitely louder than the old design one. The fan noise is almost akin to what emits from my tower computer. It isn't completely distracting if you have the TV on or some music playing, but you will definitely know it's up and running if you're working someplace quiet (like a library or alone in a room).
While not a huge issue, the USB part of the power connection is finicky, so slight plug movement in a shallow USB port will cut the power to the unit.
The Bottom Line
It's a great chill mat for the price. The large fans are very effective at constantly blowing away underbelly heat while feeding in cool air to my laptop's intake vents (which are on located on the bottom). Without the mat, my laptop would sometimes switch off if I were running cleaning/defrag/diagnostic programs that lasted awhile. If I am doing heavy work, the laptop will still run the internal fans at high speed but the Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat keeps me from worrying about sudden shutdowns due to excessive heat. If it weren't for the questionable power connection and variable air flow, I would give it five stars. To me, remembering to take care of the power plug is more distracting than the noise output. Otherwise the new Targus Notebook Cooling Chill Mat is more durable and more effective than the old design. The retail cost is $29.99, but consumers can snag it up for $19.99 when it goes on sale.
Update 05/15/2008:
Just as I have suspected, the power connection to the pad had worn out and broken the solder connection. The speed of failure was pretty quick, only taking about two weeks to go from small issues to complete non-function. The symptoms started as having the fans lose power for a few seconds before resuming rotation. After a few days of that, the problem progressed as the power connection needed fiddling or re-adjusting to maintain fan rotation. Eventually the plug needed a constant (yet gentle) force to be applied for the fans to operate, not always in the same direction. Flat tabletop use didn't make a difference from cushion or lap-use. The mat is now just a piece of plastic.
Considering the amount of time I've had this chill mat, 4 of 5 stars is pretty generous. I re-adjust my rating to somewhere between 3 and 4 stars overall, with 4 only when it's working perfectly fine.
Recommended:
Yes
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