Cooler Master NotePal X-Slim - Ultra Slim Laptop Cooling Pad with 160 mm Fan

Pros: This cooler was relatively cheap, but the metal mesh and heavy plastic give it a nice sturdy build. It's slim enough to slide into my backpack with my laptop, it is comfortable in your lap, moves quite a bit of air. It's about as loud as my laptop's internal fan, so it's pretty quiet. The ability to wrap the cord around the bottom makes it all tight and neat when you want to put it away.

Cons: Really just nitpicks here. Like another review mentioned, the usb plugin has a female on the other side so you can still use that usb slot without removing the one for the fan, and the edges on it ARE pretty sharp. Not sharp enough to cut by just handling it or anything, but enough to give you a heck of a scratch if you were in a hurry and reached across quickly and got it. I don't forsee it being a problem, but I don't think it would have hurt to encase the sharp parts in plastic or file them down, etc.

Overall Review: I'm a college student who uses a laptop for school and plays a fair amount of Warcraft on it, which causes it to run hot enough I started to worry I was going to fry something. Went looking for a cooler, I've owned one in the past, one of Belkin's cheaper models. It was horrible from the start. After way too much time digging through reviews, I settled on this one. I couldn't be happier with it. It's sturdy, the fan is pretty quiet, the metal mesh makes the heat dissipation really good even though the fan isn't centered on the section that needed cooling the most. The bottom of my laptop went from burning hot while I played to cool to touch. Absolutely what I was looking for and would recommend to others.

I logged on to post this review 3 weeks after I got it, and saw that it is out of stock and may not be restocked. I really hope it does, or when this one eventually dies I'll have to take my business elsewhere to buy another.

Pros: Well built and quiet. Doesn't take up a USB port, due to being able to plug into its plug.

Cons: It's a lot taller than I expected, despite it being labeled as "slim", but I haven't noticed any discomfort yet. It's also a little narrower than my 17" laptop, but the laptop still sits firmly on top. It didn't resolve my laptop's overheating issue like I had hoped.

Overall Review: I have an MSI GT70 gaming laptop that tends to overheat unless I turn on it's rather noisy "turbo" fan. I was hoping this cooling pad would allow quiet and cool operation, but that turns out not to be the case. Perhaps my laptop just has terrible cooling.