Antec Notebook Cooler 200 Review

200mm Fan
Boasting a huge 200mm Antec Big Boy fan, bigger than any PC fan most computer users will ever see in their experience, the Antec USB Notebook Cooler 200 - measuring at 13" x 11.2" - is a beautiful beast. From a purely aesthetic aspect the cooler will fit well with almost any notebook available on the market with its black plastic/metal frame and mirrored plates. The unit comes very well packaged against damage during shipping and while unwrapping it you really get a feel of the hefty weight this cooler packs at 1.6 lbs / 0.7 kg. While mostly manufactured from plastic and featuring a mesh metal grill on both top- and under-side of the Antec Big Boy 200mm fan, the cooler structure is very solid and should not cave in from even the heaviest of 17" notebooks available on the market.

While Antec sells the USB cooler as capable on both lap and desktop, this is not something I would want hovering above my lap with a fan happily whizzing away. If you are looking to move your notebook with the cooler attached, be prepared to face a juggling act since the cooler itself does not secure against the laptop so you're almost constantly trying to hold both cooler and notebook together in a fragile state.

If the notebook you're using also comes with a larger battery pack that does not extend across the whole width of your notebook you may be in for another act of balance since you'll be trying to align the notebook battery at almost every touch to get the battery pack to actually make even contact on all four of the mirrored contact pads of the Antec USB Notebook Cooler 200, otherwise you'll end up the notebook sliding off the cooler at every keypress.

The cooler comes with a USB Type A connector attached to a lengthy cable to plug into any of the various USB Type A ports available on notebooks and power the Antec Big Boy 200mm fan. Thankfully the cable is integrated into the cooler frame to prevent accidental disconnects and is also long enough to reach nearly any USB port on both 15" and 17" sized notebook.

Here's my HP dv6746ca 15.4" notebook sitting on the USB notebook cooler.

Older notebook owners should however be careful as the Antec USB Notebook Cooler 200 draws approximately 400mA current, out of the USB specification available 500mA, from your USB port with the fan set to high speed. This means some older notebooks that don't have the full USB specification required power supply available may only be able to power the cooler in low speed mode or not at all. This should not really be something anyone with a notebook manufactured after the year 2000 should need to worry about.

The back of the unit features two switches to toggle the blue LED's integrated into the fan on or off, which is a welcome addition for those times in the evening when you truly just want your eyes focusing on the monitor to play the latest gaming zombie horror survival game. No software is supplied to manage the Big Boy fan in the OS so the only options that are available for controlling the features of the cooler are via the rear-located switches.

The other switch toggles the Antec Big Boy fan to rotate at either Slow speed (400RPM ± 150) or High speed (600RPM ± 150). Why on earth Antec chose not to supply a higher fan speed setting is something we don't quite understand since at High speed setting the unit draws a maximum of 400mA out of the available 500mA on the USB port. Surely, the additional 100mA could have been used to provide a faster fan speed since most people who would actually go out and buy this USB notebook cooler would be using it on their gaming notebook at either a LAN gaming event or at home.

Regardless of the environment the USB notebook cooler would be used in you can be sure that your integrated notebook cooler is louder than the Antec Notebook Cooler 200 which has a noise rating of 27.1 dBA at high fan speeds. The difference between the two speed modes is also so minute that Antec would almost have been better to change the slow speed setting to an off setting instead to save notebook battery power when not needed but still allow you to keep the USB connector needed for power plugged in.

The cooler frame is built at a slight incline to allow the average notebook keyboard better typing access; unfortunately the frame is a fixed height and does not feature adjustable feet to change the incline that the notebook has compared to the user. So if you're using a notebook that already has a slight incline when placed on a flat surface, that incline becomes exaggerated to the point that you will need some time to re-familiarize yourself with your new keyboard positioning, or perhaps you may invest on a new keyboard.

A couple of suggestions we've had so far for a potential successor would be a notebook cooler with an embedded USB hub to help relocate USB ports for low-speed/-power USB devices off the notebook and help the cooler serve a secondary function even at the expense of using up 2 USB ports to power the enormous 200mm fan and before-stated USB devices. In it's current incarnation the Antec USB Notebook Cooler 200 cooler control switches do get in the way of general notebook use and frustrate with the control positioning at the back of the cooler. Implementing some sort of latch system to the notebook cooler would also help improve the mobility and inconvenience caused by having the cooler dangling off the bottom of your notebook.