High-performance and aging laptops have something in common: Keeping them quiet and cool can be a real challenge. After all, short of blowing cold air into the vents, what can you do? The best laptop cooling pads can go a long way in improving your laptop’s cooling, and that can in turn raise performance, and even extend the life of your favorite portable PC.
The Soundance laptop cooling stand keeps your laptop cool whilst elevating it to an ergonomic position … [+] height
Soundness
Some laptop cooling stands, like the IETS GT500, are high-performance coolers that lower the temperature of powerful gaming machines. Others carry more professional-looking designs better-suited for office use, like the Soundance Laptop Cooling Pad. Of course, there’s also the Targus Portable Lightweight Chill Mat, a model we consider the best overall, well-suited to most users who don’t have special laptop-cooling needs.
Whatever the reason you’re searching for a cooling pad, there’s something in this roundup for you. Here are the best laptop cooling pads you can buy today.
Laptop Compatibility: 10 – 17-inch | Fans: 2 x 90mm | Weight: 2.1 pounds | Fan control: No | Ports: 0
Best for: Lightweight, convenient and unobtrusive cooling.
The Targus dual-fan laptop cooler is lightweight and comfortable, with effective, quiet cooling, and an attractive, understated design. It doesn’t have any direct fan controls and lacks additional ports, but it only takes a single USB Type-A connection to power it up. The mat lifts your laptop, helping it sit at a comfortable angle as well as providing some additional room for added cooling.
The dual fans on the underside of the main metal surface provide sufficient cooling for a typical laptop, especially larger ones with a vented underside. This cooler supports laptops up to 17 inches in size. With its compact, attractive design, you can easily sit this on your lap and avoid cooking your thighs while on your laptop.
Pros:
Attractive design
Comfortable to place on your lap
Indeed, quiet cooling
Cons:
No additional ports or USB passthrough
No fan speed controls
Laptop Compatibility: 12 – 17-inch | Fans: 1 x 150mm, 5 x 70mm | Weight: 2.6 pounds | Fan control: On/Off | Ports: 2 x USB Type-A
Best for: Cooling on a tight budget.
The Kootek Laptop Cooling Pad is a great budget cooler with five fans and the ability to turn them on and off as you need them. It has flashy blue LED lighting (you can also disable the lighting if you prefer), and it has a built-in USB hub for powering additional accessories. The stand is ergonomic and adjustable to six different heights, so you can get the right setup just for you.
You can turn on the larger central fan for quieter cooling and then when you need added performance, turn on the additional 70mm fans for some extra airflow. This allows the overall design to be relatively quiet, although the smaller fans can get a little loud when spun up. The overall design is a little cheap feeling, with brittle plastic used throughout, but if you want to cool your laptop down without spending much, this is a great option.
Pros:
Affordable but effective cooling
Basic fan controls let you manage noise and performance
Useful USB ports
Cons:
No fan speed control
Cheap feel
Laptop Compatibility: 10 – 19-inch | Fans: 1 x 200mm | Weight: 3.38 pounds | Fan control: Fan speed | Ports: No
Best for: Cooling even the largest laptops.
If you have a big laptop, the Thermaltake Massive 20 is a great option for a laptop cooling pad. Technically it supports up to “19-inch laptops,” but since those aren’t actually a thing, just know that this cooler can fit any laptop you want to plop on top of it—including the forthcoming wave of 18-inch laptops. It features a single, 200mm fan that moves a lot of air in near silence, so you can keep your laptop cool without increasing noise levels. Direct fan controls let you raise the speed if you want more cooling, or you can lower the speed for quiet operation
Nifty RGB lighting along the sides make it easy to customize the look and feel of your laptop cooler—just hit the RGB button to change the color profile. It has small extender feet that let you raise your laptop up for more comfortable use, and the whole thing folds flat and weighs just over three pounds.
Pros:
Large, quiet cooling fan
Built-in fan speed controls
RGB lighting effects look cool
Cons:
More expensive than most laptop coolers
Bulky
Best Gaming Laptop Cooling Pad
Serious Cooling Performance
Laptop Compatibility: 13 – 17-inch | Fans: 1 x 5000 RPM Turbine | Weight: 3.5 pounds | Fan control: Fan speed | Ports: 2 x USB-A
Best for: Keeping high-performance gaming laptops cool.
For high-end gaming laptops, high noise and hot surfaces are common place. The IETS GT500 is designed to help cool the laptop down, providing effective, targeted cooling using its high RPM industrial turbofan. It won’t do much about noise, though, as this cooler gets quite loud, topping out at 65 db. Most gaming laptop players use headphones anyway, but they’re an absolute must with a laptop cooler like this, and preferably a pair with excellent noise cancellation. That is, if you operate it close to its maximum performance. At lower settings, they’re less of a necessity, but then you might want to look elsewhere.
Even so, you trade all that noise for a lot of performance. Reviewers and users alike have found that this laptop cooler has a big and noticeable effect on their laptop’s operating temperatures, reducing them in some cases by around 10 degrees. That’s enough to make sure your laptop maintains its top gaming performance throughout your session, and should extend the life of your laptop’s components, too. There’s even a built-in dust filter to prevent dust buildup in your laptop.
Pros:
Very capable of cooling
Fan speed controls let you fine tune performance to noise
Built-in dust filter
Cons:
Quite expensive
Very noisy at top speeds
Laptop Compatibility: 10 – 17-inch | Fans: 1 x 140mm | Weight: 3.6 pounds | Fan control: No | Ports: 4 x USB Type-A
Best for: A smart and professional aesthetic.
The Soundance laptop cooling pad features a modest cooling fan and several ergonomic stances so you can adjust the slant and position of your laptop for comfortable typing and posture. It has a clean, professional look, with a metallic frame that is far sturdier and feels more premium than most laptop cooling pads. It also has four USB ports on the rear, giving you the option of plugging in a range of accessories, and is powered by a single USB Type-A cable that connects to your laptop.
The metal design makes this laptop cooler heavier than most, but it’s still not heavy. The fan doesn’t have any controls, but at 140mm it should stay quiet throughout most of your day. If you want a cooling pad for your office machine, this is a great choice.