Coolink LapChilla Notebook Cooler Review

Coolink recently launched their first notebook cooler, we take a look at this new cooler.

Kolink International Corporation is a cooling specialist established in 1996 and well known among industry insiders. Throughout the years, Kolink designed and manufactured many top-performing heat-sinks under various brand names that succeeded in international markets. An experienced R&D team and ultra-modern production plants in Taiwan ensure continuous progress, efficient manufacturing conditions and strict quality standards.

Kolink’s retail brand Coolink stands for an effective conjunction of no-frills performance, excellent quality and attractive pricing. While Coolink held a strong presence in the Asian market ever since the late 90ies, it was not until 2005 that the brand was introduced to the European market on a large scale. After the launch of Coolink-Europe.com in late 2005, Coolink quickly became a well recognized brand for high-quality cooling components in Europe too.

In the 21st Century, notebooks are an ever growing fad due to commerce demanding that its systems are mobile. Notebooks are a popular choice because of the features available – such as flexibility, mobility, lightweight, wireless etc. There’s no avoiding it, notebooks do indeed give us a unique advantage to cope in an ever active world, they have contributed enormously to businesses world-wide enabling people to get on with their day to day life whilst on the go.

These rich features come at a price though. Notebooks frequently break and compared to desktop machines do not have as long a life expectancy. The simple reason for this is that the components inside a notebook are very tightly fitted together and because they are so compact this causes various devices and components to overheat thus reducing the life significantly, as well as causing system crashes and other random setbacks.

To counter these issues Coolink have developed a new laptop/notebook cooler, their first notebook cooler in fact. We will be examining the LapChilla and ascertaining how effective the cooling really is, that we might discover if we can prolong the life of our notebook/laptop.

Closer Look

The Coolink LapChilla comes presented in a strikingly colourful box. If you have dealt with any Coolink products in previous years you will immediately notice that the branding has changed. At the start of 2009 Coolink redesigned their website along with a new branding scheme (www.coolink-europe.com). The box itself is attractive and has various detailing on the front and rear, there are some specifications on the back of the box. For quite a delicate item inside, the packaging could be better. All that protects the cooler is the fairly thin cardboard box that it comes in.

Taking the Coolink LapChilla out of the box we reveal the cooler along with a sheet of brief instructions and some rubber parts to better secure the laptop on top of the LapChilla. The LapChilla looks stylish and has a professional look to it.

The LapChilla is made of hard plastic more specifically “ABS Kunststoff” the colour of this plastic is white, on the centre of the cooler is a printed logo with some diagrams displaying at what degrees the LapChilla can operate at. Underneath the logo are 33 cut-out gaps, giving a partial view of the 220mm blue fan. Although the LapChilla does weigh in at only 0.8KG the overall feel of the cooler doesn’t feel as sturdy and solid as other coolers made of slightly more hard wearing materials.

As already mentioned the LapChilla can be positioned at different angles -15º and 32º. It can also be setup to lie completely flat. The choice is yours, the benefit from having a tilt is that you can adapt the position to your specific needs, allowing a modification to posture preventing the risk of RSI. To set the LapChilla at an angle you have to push the tray back and up. This can be a little tricky at first, but you see get the idea. Around the side of the LapChilla there is a little neat little pocket with a USB socket on an expandable wire. This is used to power up the fan. To suit the needs of various notebooks the wire is flexible so that you can stretch to various places if your USB is for example – on the other side of the cooler.

The fan itself is 220MM which is rather large, my immediate thoughts were “That must be quite loud when its spinning round!” But on paper, it’s said to operate at 600RPM giving out just 16dB/A. It will be interesting to see in the next section how loud this fan is. We also be investigating how well the fan shifts that unnecessary heat from the base of the notebook.

Specfications

Over the page we will begin the testing.

Testing and Conclusion

To test our notebook cooler we will be giving it a thorough examination on a 15” laptop. How the test will work is quite simple. The notebook will be left idle for 30 minutes and the temperature of the CPU and Chipset will be read and recorded. Next the system will be loaded 100% with OCCT benchmarking tool. After 30 minutes of stressing the system, the CPU and Chipset temperature will be read and recorded. After both sets of temperatures are obtained we will then proceed to placing the notebook under the exact same test criteria except this time we will be plugging in the LapChilla fan and reporting those temperatures and this will ultimately determine how effective the gigantic 220MM fan is at dissipating that unwanted heat.

Notebook Dell D630
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz
Memory 2GB DDR2
HDD 60GB SATA-II
Screen 14.1″

The Dell D630 I tested the LapChilla on sat very comfortably on the cooler, I applied the rubber mountings to further secure the notebook. It’s fair to say that a 15″ notebook is a perfect fit for the LapChilla.

Results

The above results certainly show us that the Coolink LapChilla has brilliant cooling attributes. It was able to reduce temperatures significantly, I should say for the record that the LapChilla is very quiet whilst under operation. It’s hardly noticable that the giant 220MM fan is even spinning. So, as far as performance is concerned, the Coolink LapChilla has definately impressed.

Conclusion

The Coolink LapChilla is a brilliant cooling solution for notebooks and laptops. Having tested the LapChilla we can clearly see that the enormous 220MM fan does just what is intended, it knocks off those valuable temperatures and this can only be welcomed. Heat causes problems, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, reducing these temperatures will definately prolong the life expectancy of this notebook, it will also prevent system crashes and problems occuring in the future. As the statistics state, the fan operates at 600RPM giving out just 16dB/A and I can verify that the noise from this stylish looking fan is whisper quiet. You will suffer no interruptions at all.

What I like about the LapChilla is the functionality. No matter where you are, you can take it with you and it will adapt to the environment/position that you require and it looks great too.

The only improvements or suggestions that I would make are that the materials used can feel quite delicate and whilst this isn’t terrible it would be of more benefit to use stronger materials. I would like to see the LapChilla available in different colours also. Whether this is Coolink’s intention, I do not know.

Coming in at €29.90 the LapChilla is priced to sell. For the functionality and performance this is probably amongst the best coolers you could invest in today.