Razer Laptop Cooling Pad Review: Are You A Fan?

Keeping your laptop cool while gaming doesn’t conscionable amended its performance; it too prolongs nan life of its components and helps debar artillery bloat, an affliction that becomes overmuch communal pinch age. Razer says its $150 Laptop Cooling Pad useful pinch laptops of immoderate size and will small CPU and GPU temperatures by up to 18 percent. (It also, naturally, has an RGB strip.)

With immoderate Razer gaming laptops, it tin spell moreover further. When nan cooling pad is connected via USB to a 2023 aliases 2024 Razer Blade 16, a characteristic called Hyperboost automatically adjusts instrumentality velocity and cooling mode and lets nan laptop allocate up to 20 different watts each to nan CPU and GPU. (Razer is bringing Hyperboost to overmuch models complete nan coming months.)

I’ve played astir pinch nan Razer Laptop Cooling Pad for nan past less weeks, immoderate earlier and aft nan Hyperboost update. And while it isn’t alternatively arsenic awesome arsenic Razer claims, I did announcement a important betterment successful 1080p capacity successful games that were antecedently held backmost by a deficiency of powerfulness to nan CPU.

I tested nan Razer Laptop Cooling Pad pinch a top-of-the-line 2024 Razer Blade 16 pinch a mobile Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics insubstantial and Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU, arsenic bully arsenic pinch nan 2024 Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (AMD version). It’s imaginable to hit done preset instrumentality speeds and RGB lighting configurations utilizing buttons connected nan side, but bully powerfulness requires installing Razer Synapse, which mightiness beryllium a deal-breaker for immoderate group moreover if nan worth isn’t.

Let’s reside nan elephant successful nan room first: Razer’s cooling pad gets loud. With nan 140mm instrumentality spinning afloat bore, I measured 62 decibels correct adjacent to nan laptop and astir 56 to 58 decibels successful what I would spot a realistic gaming position. (My level has a sound level of astir 40 decibels.) It’s not ear-splitting, but nan fan’s changeless measurement and mechanical timbre are distracting — it sounds adjacent tin to a vacuum cleaner to startle my cat. For comparison, nan built-in fans connected immoderate laptops I tested output astatine small than 50 decibels utilizing their Turbo powerfulness profiles. 

Razer’s quest to create a laptop cooling pad that tin caller immoderate instrumentality too intends that it’s ample by necessity. Not only does it return up overmuch abstraction connected nan array than your laptop unsocial but it too requires outer powerfulness and uses a bulky adapter that crowds retired nan plug adjacent to it connected nan powerfulness strip. It comes pinch 3 different apical plates that threat to nan pad magnetically. The expanse for laptops from 14 to 16 inches and nan 1 for 18-inch laptops usage practice foam strips to create an airtight seal betwixt nan instrumentality enclosure and nan intake vents astatine nan bottommost of nan laptop. The third, for fanless aliases ventless devices for illustration nan MacBook Air, is wholly flat. The backmost boasts 3 USB-A 2.0 ports that enactment accessible nary matter nan size of nan laptop connected top.

It’s a bully constituent that Hyperboost works, astatine slightest successful definite circumstances. In his reappraisal of nan 2024 Razer Blade 16, YouTuber Jarrod’sTech noted that immoderate it and nan 2023 exemplary underperform astatine 1080p. That’s because, by default, they allocate overmuch of their afloat powerfulness allowance to nan GPU, but astatine small resolutions, astir games are held backmost by nan CPU. 

Hyperboost blows past that. With overmuch powerfulness to nan CPU, nan 2024 Blade 16 put retired 123 frames per 2nd successful Cyberpunk 2077 astatine 1080p pinch each mounting maxed retired (except ray tracing), compared to nan 90fps I measured without Hyperboost. Shadow of nan Tomb Raider was similar: astatine 1080p max settings, I measured 204fps pinch Hyperboost connected and 185 pinch it disabled.

Once you clip disconnected 1080p, nan advantage evaporates; nan GPU becomes nan limiting factor, and pumping overmuch powerfulness into it grants diminishing returns. At nan Blade 16’s autochthonal 1600p solution (and above, if you’re utilizing an outer monitor), I measured astir nan aforesaid model title pinch aliases without Hyperboost, springiness aliases return a model aliases two. Temperatures are still noticeably lower, pinch nan power-hungry Intel Core i9-14900HX staying beneath 90 degrees Celsius and nan RTX 4090 keeping nether 70 degrees nether torture testing, but nan 2024 Blade 16 already had a awesome cooling strategy acknowledgment to its thickness. Thermal throttling was ne'er a concern. 

The Razer Laptop Cooling Pad will do a bully business of cooling non-Razer gaming laptops, excessively — pinch aliases without Synapse. It prevented nan AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor incorrect nan Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 from reaching its 95 degrees Celsius ceiling erstwhile benchmarking, which it usually hits alternatively fast. Even nan information supra nan keyboard, which often hits 115 degrees Fahrenheit, topped retired astatine a comparatively balmy 90 degrees nether afloat load. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a statistically important model title betterment successful games aliases synthetic tests connected nan ROG Zephyrus G16 — moreover aft taking advantage of nan thermal headroom to overclock nan CPU and GPU.

Therein lies nan biggest problem pinch nan Razer Laptop Cooling Pad. It surely pushes aerial around, but only group pinch a Hyperboost-compatible Razer Blade 16 — a very mini conception of nan wide gaming statement — will spot a value successful performance, and moreover then, only successful CPU-limited games.

Of course, it’s imaginable that Hyperboost will make overmuch of a value successful different Razer laptops, for illustration nan slimmer Blade 16 that Razer announced astatine CES nan aforesaid clip it released Hyperboost. The caller Blade is astir arsenic dense arsenic nan ROG Zephyrus G16, which uses drastic powerfulness and somesthesia limits to support powerfulness nether powerfulness successful its slim chassis. Maybe nan caller Blade 16 will negociate nan powerfulness conscionable fine, for illustration nan 2024 model, but perchance nan timing isn’t wholly coincidental. 

Finally, arsenic Reddit users personification pointed out, Razer’s $150 cooling pad has a batch successful communal pinch akin cooling stands from Llano aliases IETS: each require outer power, usage an adjustable-speed 140mm fan, personification RGB and a USB hub, and seal to nan laptop pinch practice foam, but nan Llano and IETS coolers costs personification to $100. Many of them moreover personification adjustable tilt levels, which nan Razer cooling pad lacks. We haven’t tested them, but unless you personification a compatible Razer Blade aliases really want nan RGB lights connected your laptop cooling pad to sync pinch Chroma, point overmuch basal will activity conscionable arsenic bully for $50 less.

Photography by Jonathan Hilburg for The Verge.