Review: Koolsink Notebook Stand

First Impressions

Official home of the Koolsink
Für den deutschen Testbericht bitte hier klicken.


The Koolsink notebook stand is a simple sleek looking stand. It basically is a 2mm thick aluminum plate designed to be a fanless notebook stand to improve the ergonomics and the cooling of notebooks. I have had the opportunity to test out the Koolsink stand specifically made for the Macbook in silver thanks to the kind people at Higoto GmbH. As said above, the first impression of the stand was sleek, simple, stylish.

Design

The design of the Koolsink is pretty cool in my opinion. The Koolsink is offered in different sizes and in two color variations: black aluminum and silver aluminum. I think the silver aluminum goes better with the white Macbook and the black with the blackbook. The Koolsink lifts the Macbook for about 4 cm in the back so the keyboard is a little tilted when you use the Kooksink with the Macbook and the display is comfortably raised. At the back the Koolsink's homepage is printed (lasered?). At the bottom there are four little plastic feet so that the desk nor the Koolsink get scratched while in use.

Ergonomics

The Koolsink improves the ergonomics pretty well by tilting the keyboard and raising the display (4 cm approximately 2 inches). I liked how it improved my touch typing because I personally like tilted keyboards more than flat ones. I actually even think that the Koolsink can be a bit more higher (maybe 1 or 2 cm) for my taste but I think that this height probably suits more people.

Cooling

Now, since the main selling point of the Koolsink are the cooling abilities I have thought up a personal cooling test to test out the fanless cooling of the Koolsink. I have decided to proceed this way:

• after the Macbook has been shut down for at least 5 hrs I booted it up and have started a scan with ClamXAV (a virus scanner for OS X that uses a lot of performance and heats up the Macbook pretty good).
  
• I let ClamXAV run for 30 minutes and measured the temperature by using iStat (a system utility widget).
  
• I did this once without the Koolsink (Macbook on a wooden desk) and once with the Koolsink. Below are a few screenshots of the widget.

The source for the cooling effect is one the aluminum plate and two an effect called the Venturi effect according to the manufacturer.

Final thoughts

I think the Koolsink is a fine piece of a notebook stand. What I really like about it are the following aspects:

• it really does cool down the notebook
• it is portable, light and small
• it is fanless, thus silent and longer battery life
• better ergonomics
• stylish design

The only downside is the price. In Europe you will have to pay 50 Eur plus shipping which is quite expensive; this might sound a little too much for some people. Unfortunately, I had to return the product and purchasing is just not possible at the moment in the EU at that price-at least for poor students like myself I guess. However, if you are looking for a notebook stand that cools, is semi-portable and doesn't need power-then look no further-you should go for the Koolsink.

MB-switcher