Razer Laptop Cooling Pad review: are you a fan?

Jan 25, 2025 08:00 PM - 2 weeks ago 18669

Keeping your laptop cool while gaming doesn’t conscionable amended its performance; it besides prolongs the life of its components and helps debar battery bloat, an affliction that becomes much communal pinch age. Razer says its $150 Laptop Cooling Pad useful pinch laptops of immoderate size and will little CPU and GPU temperatures by up to 18 percent. (It also, naturally, has an RGB strip.)

With immoderate Razer gaming laptops, it tin spell moreover further. When the cooling pad is connected via USB to a 2023 aliases 2024 Razer Blade 16, a characteristic called Hyperboost automatically adjusts instrumentality velocity and cooling mode and lets the laptop allocate up to 20 other watts each to the CPU and GPU. (Razer is bringing Hyperboost to much models complete the coming months.)

I’ve played astir pinch the Razer Laptop Cooling Pad for the past fewer weeks, some earlier and aft the Hyperboost update. And while it isn’t rather arsenic awesome arsenic Razer claims, I did announcement a important betterment successful 1080p capacity successful games that were antecedently held backmost by a deficiency of powerfulness to the CPU.

I tested the Razer Laptop Cooling Pad pinch a top-of-the-line 2024 Razer Blade 16 pinch a mobile Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics paper and Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU, arsenic good arsenic pinch the 2024 Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (AMD version). It’s imaginable to rhythm done preset instrumentality speeds and RGB lighting configurations utilizing buttons connected the side, but good power requires installing Razer Synapse, which mightiness beryllium a deal-breaker for immoderate group moreover if the value isn’t.

Screenshot of Razer Synapse package pinch respective cooling instrumentality profiles, including a Hyperboost mode that “pushes past modular strategy powerfulness limits and pinch progressive cooling to execute eventual capacity gains.”

Hello, Synapse, my aged acquaintance.

Let’s reside the elephant successful the room first: Razer’s cooling pad gets loud. With the 140mm instrumentality spinning afloat bore, I measured 62 decibels correct adjacent to the laptop and astir 56 to 58 decibels successful what I would see a realistic gaming position. (My flat has a sound level of astir 40 decibels.) It’s not ear-splitting, but the fan’s changeless measurement and mechanical timbre are distracting — it sounds adjacent capable to a vacuum cleaner to startle my cat. For comparison, the built-in fans connected some laptops I tested output astatine little than 50 decibels utilizing their Turbo powerfulness profiles. 

Razer’s quest to create a laptop cooling pad that tin fresh immoderate instrumentality besides intends that it’s ample by necessity. Not only does it return up much abstraction connected the table than your laptop unsocial but it besides requires outer powerfulness and uses a bulky adapter that crowds retired the plug adjacent to it connected the powerfulness strip. It comes pinch 3 different apical plates that threat to the pad magnetically. The sheet for laptops from 14 to 16 inches and the 1 for 18-inch laptops usage representation foam strips to create an airtight seal betwixt the instrumentality enclosure and the intake vents astatine the bottommost of the laptop. The third, for fanless aliases ventless devices for illustration the MacBook Air, is wholly flat. The backmost boasts 3 USB-A 2.0 ports that stay accessible nary matter the size of the laptop connected top.

Three greenish USB ports connected the backmost of a bulky-looking achromatic laptop guidelines pinch the Razer wordmark supra them.

Three USB 2.0 ports mean you tin support your rodent and keyboard plugged into the cooling pad.

It’s a bully point that Hyperboost works, astatine slightest successful definite circumstances. In his reappraisal of the 2024 Razer Blade 16, YouTuber Jarrod’sTech noted that some it and the 2023 exemplary underperform astatine 1080p. That’s because, by default, they allocate much of their full powerfulness allowance to the GPU, but astatine little resolutions, astir games are held backmost by the CPU. 

Hyperboost blows past that. With much powerfulness to the CPU, the 2024 Blade 16 put retired 123 frames per 2nd successful Cyberpunk 2077 astatine 1080p pinch each mounting maxed retired (except ray tracing), compared to the 90fps I measured without Hyperboost. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was similar: astatine 1080p max settings, I measured 204fps pinch Hyperboost connected and 185 pinch it disabled.

Once you time off 1080p, the advantage evaporates

Once you time off 1080p, the advantage evaporates; the GPU becomes the limiting factor, and pumping much powerfulness into it grants diminishing returns. At the Blade 16’s autochthonal 1600p solution (and above, if you’re utilizing an outer monitor), I measured astir the aforesaid framework complaint pinch aliases without Hyperboost, springiness aliases return a framework aliases two. Temperatures are still noticeably lower, pinch the power-hungry Intel Core i9-14900HX staying beneath 90 degrees Celsius and the RTX 4090 keeping nether 70 degrees nether torture testing, but the 2024 Blade 16 already had a awesome cooling strategy acknowledgment to its thickness. Thermal throttling was ne'er a concern. 

A ROG Zephyrus G16 gaming laptop pinch its characteristic LED “slash lighting” connected a achromatic Razer cooling pad.

You tin usage the Razer Laptop Cooling Pad pinch immoderate laptop. Nobody tin extremity you.

The Razer Laptop Cooling Pad will do a bully occupation of cooling non-Razer gaming laptops, excessively — pinch aliases without Synapse. It prevented the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor wrong the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 from reaching its 95 degrees Celsius ceiling erstwhile benchmarking, which it usually hits rather fast. Even the portion supra the keyboard, which often hits 115 degrees Fahrenheit, topped retired astatine a comparatively balmy 90 degrees nether afloat load. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a statistically important framework complaint betterment successful games aliases synthetic tests connected the ROG Zephyrus G16 — moreover aft taking advantage of the thermal headroom to overclock the CPU and GPU.

A Razer Blade 16, pinch its three-snake logo and a wavy, polychrome shape sticker connected the lid, connected apical of the cooling pad. RGB visible reflected connected the table below.

Pictured: 1 of the very fewer laptops that activity pinch Hyperboost.

Therein lies the biggest problem pinch the Razer Laptop Cooling Pad. It surely pushes aerial around, but only group pinch a Hyperboost-compatible Razer Blade 16 — a very mini conception of the wide gaming organization — will spot a quality successful performance, and moreover then, only successful CPU-limited games.

Of course, it’s imaginable that Hyperboost will make much of a quality successful different Razer laptops, for illustration the slimmer Blade 16 that Razer announced astatine CES the aforesaid time it released Hyperboost. The caller Blade is astir arsenic heavy arsenic the ROG Zephyrus G16, which uses drastic powerfulness and somesthesia limits to support power nether power successful its slim chassis. Maybe the caller Blade 16 will negociate the power conscionable fine, for illustration the 2024 model, but possibly the timing isn’t wholly coincidental. 

Finally, arsenic Reddit users person pointed out, Razer’s $150 cooling pad has a batch successful communal pinch akin cooling stands from Llano aliases IETS: each require outer power, usage an adjustable-speed 140mm fan, person RGB and a USB hub, and seal to the laptop pinch representation foam, but the Llano and IETS coolers costs person to $100. Many of them moreover person adjustable tilt levels, which the Razer cooling pad lacks. We haven’t tested them, but unless you person a compatible Razer Blade aliases really want the RGB lights connected your laptop cooling pad to sync pinch Chroma, thing much basal will activity conscionable arsenic good for $50 less.

Photography by Jonathan Hilburg for The Verge.

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