Manufacturer and Sponsor: Cooler Master
Product on review: Cooler Master Notepal Ergostand
Street Price: £35.70

Overview




Another clean and simple box front from Cooler Master here with (as you'd expect by now!) a decent product picture, and supporting notebooks sized from 9” to 17”! That's quite a range of sizes and more than any of the others being looked at today. It's also immediately clear that this is a departure from the norm for Cooler Master in that this notebook cooler is also a very highly adjustable stand too!




On the box rear we again get the standard information panels for Features and Specifications, and some pictures with basic details about a number of those features – and that's it for this one – there's no more room! It is quite a small box compared to a lot of the others.

Features and Specifications

• Ergonomic design: 5 different height settings to ease strain on your neck and wrist
• Optimal cooling performance: Full range metal mesh surface, built in 140mm silent fan with stepless speed control
• Great for all sizes: Adjustable anti-slip holders for 9” - 17” notebooks, easy front I/O port access
• Value-added features: 4-port USB Hub, 2 rear cable clips, side handles for cable management






A Closer Look




The Notepal Ergostand is a development of the notebook cooling pads that Cooler Master have made before and takes what they have already achieved and combines it with a fully adjustable stand. The result is a very impressive device indeed – the same 140mm fan as the Notepal AX and the Notepal X2 but with a 4-port USB Hub and some added cable managemant features too! The Notepal Ergostand boasts the largest notebook size support of any of the products on test here today as well – you can see the large rubber pads set into the mesh surface to aid in preventing slippage, and there are rubber coated 'props' which slide into the slots on the front edge and which can be adjusted to the left or right to support all those varying sizes of notebooks! You can also see the left side handle in the picture above – these are part of the cable management system for routing cabling cleanly behind the unit.




There's a lot more going on underneath the Notepal Ergostand and you can see that the stand base is equipped with some large rubber anti-slip pads. Also of note are the two cable clips to either side of the sculpted air intake grille.




You can see from this shot the way that the 'props' support the front of the notebook when the stand is used in any of it's elevated positions. They can be adjusted sideways not only to allow for different sizes of notebook but also so that if your particular model has some front panel I/O (typically headphone and mic sockets, or maybe media card readers) then these can still be accessed whilst he notebook is in the stand. Good design that!

In use the Notepal Ergostand was superb. There are 4 notches which the stand can be slotted into for height adjustment and of course it can be used folded 'flat' too – when used inclined it would be essential to use an external keyboard and mouse as even the lowest of the four angles is too steep for comfortable typing. When folded 'flat' the Notepal Ergostand still presents a slope of about 6.5 degrees, which is about the same as most of the other units on test today, so could easily be used that way without needing any external input devices. The 140mm fan is quiet and adjustable through the use of a wheel speed adjuster the same as we've seen on other units. The 4-port USB Hub is a great bonus although the USB sockets are recessed under the right side quite far so not too easy to plug in without a bit of a fiddle. The cable management is a useful feature too, keeping things looking just that little bit tidier. The unit is USB powered as all the others are and Cooler Master of course provide the relevant cable for that purpose.

(To read Vortez Hardware's full individual review of the Cooler Master Notepal Ergostand please click here)