// PC GAMER — GAMING
I've never seen a laptop cooler come with its own comic strip before, but it still hasn't convinced me this noisy beast is worth $50
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Andy Edser is a man with a mission. It's a mission he didn't sign up for, or even want, but I'm his boss so he has to do what I say. And I'm making him test a ton of different cheap tech I might find on Amazon, AliExpress, TikTok Shop, or down the back of my sofa. Out of nowhere it will appear on his doorstep with no warning, and he has no choice but to use whatever it is like his life depends on it. Because it does.
I find myself charmed (and perhaps a little perturbed) by the little black envelope included with this Klim Everest laptop cooling pad. Inside you get a set of shiny stickers, a warranty card, and, err.. a comic strip depicting the fictional process that begins when you order one.
"Your product was carefully retrieved from our inventory with sterilized anti-bacterial gloves and placed on a satin silk cushion," the first panel explains. "The party we organized to celebrate your order lasted three days."
Okay, that's something I've never seen before. And I'll be honest, the sarcastic comic endears me to the product more than it should. I could do without the last panel, though, which says: "If you feel like it, send us a photo of you (or your pet) and we'll send you a printable version of this comic strip with your photo on it."
A step too far, I feel. Anyway, the pad itself is a very sizable unit, designed to cool laptops from 14 to 17.3-inches in size and powered by a USB Type-A port. Atop its silver plastic frame sits a foam gasket, designed to create a seal between the bottom of your lappy and the outside air. Two 60 mm fans pull cool air from the rear of the pad and fire it at the bottom of your machine, into any awaiting vents.
The full MSRP of the Klim Everest is listed as $60, but it's currently down to $50 at Amazon. There are cheaper options on the market, but this one is much more wallet-friendly than, say, this Razer unit for a mahoosive $150.
Speaking of which, I have an ageing Razer Blade 15 that likes to get toasty under full load. So, I booted up the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, ran it on repeat, and gathered my temperature readings—before placing the lappy atop the Everest (making sure not to block any vents) to see if it made much difference.
Results recorded on a Razer Blade 15 (2020) gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7 10875H and an RTX 3080 mobile GPU
In terms of noise? Yes, very much so. The Everest makes an irritating whirring sound whenever it moves a meaningful amount of air, and the extra cooling doesn't convince the Blade 15's fans to shut up under heavy load, either. The two combine together to create quite the racket, particularly at higher settings.