Do I Need A Notebook Cooler?

This is a good question because there will be some laptop owners who won't benefit from owning such a device as the Xena Notebook Cooler. You'll have to ask yourself after this review, if you would need such an accessory. For those who are extremely mobile, there is the factor of bringing along the cooler with you. It's an extra piece of equipment to shuffle around in the car or wherever you go, and the Xena does require external power to run its two fans and the extra USB ports. This might seem inhibiting, but a rather inexpensive device like the Xena could prolong your laptop's life.

Acknowledging there could be a few perceived drawbacks for an extremely mobile laptop user, let's also focus on the situations where a laptop owner should consider a notebook cooler. The average laptop user may not be aware their notebook is exposed to extreme temperatures on a regular basis. As soon as the laptop is placed against a surface, the heat vacuum begins to form. Ideally, laptops would be several inches from any sort of surface, but how realistic is this. It isn't realistic at all. Somekind of surface must be used to prop the laptop up to use it. More often than not, this surface is a conductor of heat. A table, the top blanket of a mattress, and even something as trivial as a newspaper, can be the catalyst to a heat increase which will, over time, decrease the hardware performance and lead to hardware failure.

Unfortunately, the way most (if not all) laptops are designed, are the hard drive and battery being located underneath the laptop, being separated by only the thin casing of the notebook itself. Currently, there hasn't been much revolutionary design with regards to battery placement and hard drive placement in a laptop. This is probably due to the inherent lack of placement options.