More on Heat Insulators for Laptops

Ever since reading about heat insulators for laptops, I’ve been thinking about buying one. I did have some concerns about heat potentially being reflected back into the laptop (after all, the heat has to go somewhere). Well, Julie (who wrote the original review at The Gadgeteer) later took some temperature readings and she’s updated her LapPad review.

And, the results were mostly what I expected. In the control setup — without a LapPad — Julie’s PowerBook reached 131° after two hours. And, when testing with LapLogic’s Taku pad (their beefiest model), the laptop reached 138° after two hours. Yeah, it is a few degrees higher, but I could live with that.

I’m set on buying a heat insulator/dissipater of some type, but I didn’t want to rule out other brands either. Here's what I’ve found, including some new models mentioned in the comments from last time:

• Coolpad — it’s handily available at major stores such as Staples and CompUSA but I have some doubts about the cooling efficiency of a plastic product. I mean, it may be fine, but other products look more promising.

• KoolSink — this one caught my eye with its elegant simplicity (it’s just aluminum bent into a wedge). The aluminum would seem to be a good conductor and the laptop can even be tucked into the underside of the wedge for traveling. But then I read their FAQ where they concede that using a KoolSink on your lap “would not be very comfortable”.

• The Lapinator — though it’s obviously a small company, I couldn’t discount the Lapinator (silly name aside). In the end, though, I wasn’t sure that it’d work so well for traveling. Sure, they state that the foam “feet” are compressible when stored in a laptop bag, but my laptop bag is “slot loading” and I’m just not sure if those feet would get snagged on the way in.

• Antec Notebook Cooler — this is another cooler, but with active cooling (fans). And, while it may be suitable for other people, it doesn’t look very portable — and that’s one of my primary requirements for a laptop cooler.

• LapPads — so, the LapPads remain. They’re effective at deflecting heat and they’re portable — that’s about all I can ask for. So, I next had to decide on which model to get. LapLogic has a handy comparison table of their models which helped to narrow it down. I wanted a portable one, which eliminated three. And, of the three remaining, the Norte (the middle one) looks like a good compromise. It has more heat protection than the lowest model but it’s only about 1/3 heavier, whereas the top portable model is over twice has heavy as the low end one.

Now I just have to choose which color I’d like ;). Of course, all the cool metallic colors are only available on the high-end models, but I don’t think that’s enough of a reason for me to settle for a heavier pad. So, I’ll probably order one in a week or two.