The Basics:

Once out of the protective plastic bag and the Styrofoam shipping inserts, we get our first glimpse at the actual cooler. The top casing is a shiny, black polycarbonate-type material that has a very nice finish to it, but will most definitely show fingerprints. The middle insert is constructed from aluminum and has a lightly textured matte finish. The bottom and top of the highly perforated insert have rubber "bumpers" to prevent your laptop from sliding around. Towards the bottom, you'll notice the Zalman logo.



Flipping the unit over reveals a better look at the gigantic 220mm fan and two more rubber, anti-skid feet at the bottom. Towards the top there are two "flip-up" feet (with two more rubber pads) to give the user another half-inch of height adjustment. Utilizing the "flip-up" feet causes the cooler to slide around a bit on desktop surfaces as there is no addition rubber bumpers on them.



Around the back, we have the working bits of the Zalman ZM-NC3000U ultra quiet notebook cooler. The ports are spaced nicely and are labeled accordingly. From left to right we have: power button, fan speed controller, mini-USB port for power, (3) USB ports, and an AC power connector (optional AC power adapter sold separately - but you won't need it).



Other than the cooler itself, Zalman includes a mini-USB to dual USB cable for powering both the fan and the 3-port USB hub. In our testing, we found that even plugging in just one of the two connectors worked fine with a keyboard and mouse, however we did not try with higher powered devices such as hard drives or USB flash memory sticks.



Finally, we have a side shot showing the amount of space underneath. Without having the fan running, this design should provide for some airflow and give you a more ergonomic surface to work from. The design Zalman has used here is quite different from other laptop coolers we've seen at Bigbruin.com; most of them are flat-bottomed and require the feet for allowing air to flow underneath the cooler. They also don't really provide any additional ergonomic benefit unless their feet are utilized.