In Use:

With a 15" MacBook Pro mounted on the Notepal U Stand, you get a better sense of the cooler's size. The anti-slip holders are easily adjustable as they can be slid back and forth to give you room to rest your wrists. This is especially convenient for our MacBook as it has larger than average wrist rests and using the holders might make it difficult to type. However, because they stick up almost an inch above the top of the deck, they may interfere with slimmer laptops - for larger desktop replacement devices, this may not prove to be an issue.



The next image shows the cooler set in position two. As I found during testing, this is the perfect position for setting the unit on your lap, typing up reviews, lying in bed and watching TV. It allows for a comfortable keyboard position while bringing the screen forward enough to see it easily - and at the same time keeps the screen low enough to see over it in time to catch the replay of that awesome touchdown pass.



Flipping the unit over the first thing you may notice is the white lines around the perimeter of the device. This is the area where you must mount the fans, should you choose to install them. Otherwise, you will not be able to fold up the cooler for storage - as noted at the top of the unit.



Mounted side by side, the coolers fit very snugly between the demarcations. There is a bit more room above and below should you wish to move the fans up or down to position them directly under the hotspots on your portable devices. You can also see how the sleeved fan cable attaches to the main housing for power. The large button at the top of the fan housing allows the user to add, remove, or adjust the fans with minimal effort.



The next image show exactly how much clearance there is with the unit in its lowest position. There are also a few clips on each fan housing to run the sleeved cable without having them float loose and risk getting snagged.



Lastly, we have another top-down view of the unit. The included USB cable is just long enough to reach around to the left-side USB ports on our MacBook. If the laptop had ports on the right as a good many do, this would not be an issue. If I had the 17" model, there might have been an issue with the cable which would require either an extension or running the cable under the laptop.



During operation I had to double check that the cooler's fans were running because they are so quiet. I had hoped there would be a way to increase fan speeds during those periods where the laptop's system fans were running at full speed to better cool the solid aluminum chassis, but it's certainly not a deal breaker.