The Cooler Master Notepal Ergo 360 laptop cooling stand packs a load of promise in its name.
Featuring two 8cm fans powered by USB, a large, sturdy surface for resting up to 17-inch laptops, and with a trick up its sleeve, the Ergo 360 boasts cooling power for a recommended retail price of R369.
Beneath the cooling pad (39.9cm x 29.7cm x 3.5cm) is a mounting point for an adjustable stand that raises the pad from its standard resting position through three additional angled viewing heights.
The stand also unclips to become a tablet PC and smartphone stand.
Cooler Master NotePal ERGO 360
The Ergo for “Ergonomics” must have been bolted on by the zealous marketing department. While the angled nature of a laptop stand certainly does make for a comfier presentation for typing, the ability of the Ergo 360 to elevate up to a 45 degree angle causes my carpal tunnels to ache just looking at it.
However, depending on the design of the laptop screen hinges being used, and if a keyboard is part of the equation, this elevation setting may prove useful.
The 360 element features as the rubber foot of the stand acts as a pivot around which the laptop stand can be rotated, presumably for sharing screen content without having to uproot the laptop.
The adjustable stand itself seems sturdy enough, and clips firmly into the base of the pad. However, the small plastic clips and receptors that secure the stand’s arm in position might struggle with longevity if care isn’t taken.
When in a raised position, the rubber foot of the stand is firmly planted; which is good because the plastic feet at the front of the stand slide around easily to accommodate its 360 degree nature.
Cooler Master NotePal ERGO 360
To stop your laptop sliding free, there are a couple of flip-up buffers with rubber pads to protect the edge of a laptop. The hinges on these buffers seemed sturdy enough, and unless undue force is applied, they should be capable of holding back heavy laptops.
Overall, the stand and cooling pad felt sturdy while cradling my 15-inch laptop at all elevations.
When detached and flipped over, the stand becomes a tablet PC or smartphone cradle. Rubber feet on the base grip well on a flat surface. The large rubber foot-pivot doubles up as a rest to keep tablets and phones from sliding sideways. A groove in the cradle rounds off the design.
As a tablet PC and smartphone stand, it functions perfectly well and is a nice addition to the package. Of course, when in use as a tablet cradle, the laptop cooling pad can longer be raised. Personally this wasn’t a problem as I found the “flat” orientation the best for use with my laptop.
Cooler Master NotePal ERGO 360
On to the cooling features. The Ergo 360 features two 8cm fans (fan speed ±1700RPM), arranged so as to draw air in from beneath the cooling pad, and disperse it along the underside of a laptop. A large plastic grille gives plenty of potential airflow area.
The fans are positioned such that they would blow cool air into the typical laptop points for CPU air intake, as well as across the HDD and RAM hot air exhaust points.
Along the rear of the cooling pad is an exhaust grille, so hot air isn’t trapped underneath the laptop.
There are no speed settings for the fans – plugging in the USB cable switches them on at full tilt. It is worth noting that the USB cable is a decent length; the excess length wraps up neatly into a recess in the cooling pad.
The downside of these fans is their noise factor, despite Cooler Master’s marketing claims of them being silent. In general office use they are quite audible, with Jeremy even remarking that it sounded like his Xbox 360. However, this is just white noise and soon fades from awareness, especially if a conversation is taking place or music/movies are playing.
Cooler Master NotePal ERGO 360
To test the cooling capabilities of the Ergo 360, I fired up PCmark 7 and logged some temperatures.
The tests were done using my work laptop, which features and Intel i7 Q 720 CPU @ 1.6GHz, a mobile AMD Radeon HD 6500 series GPU, 6GB RAM, and an SSD.
Idle- and load-tests were done with the laptop resting on my desk without a cooling pad (and therefore with poor airflow); using the Ergo 360 cooler; and for comparison sake, my usual Antec laptop cooler which boasts one 20cm fan.
In each instance, the laptop was allowed to idle for five minutes before the benchmark was run. The PC Mark 7 benchmarks perform both CPU and GPU intensive tests for approximately 30 minutes. Temperatures from both these states were logged at 5 second intervals for the duration, and then averages derived from the results.
| CPU average temp | GPU average temp | |
| No cooler – Idle | 51°C | 49°C |
| No cooler – Load | 65°C | 61°C |
| Antec – Idle | 37°C | 35°C |
| Antec cooler – Load | 60°C | 55°C |
| CM Ergo – Idle | 36°C | 35°C |
| CM Ergo – Load | 58°C | 53°C |
Comparing the cooling pad results to those when using none, there is a clear difference. This difference meant less stress was placed on the built-in laptop fan, which can be heard working overtime as things heat up.
The cooler Master Notepal Ergo 360 laptop cooling stand certainly fulfils its task, and should serve well those who often put their laptop hardware to the test – crunching numbers or crushing noobs.
With a fairly solid design, good cooling capability, and a tablet PC/smartphone stand thrown in for good measure, R369 (RRP) seems a fair price for prolonging the life of your laptop hardware.
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