ThermaltakeMassive 12 Max Steel Mesh Panel with 1 x 120mm and 4 x 80mm Fans, 10"-17" Notebook Cooler CL-N018-PL12BU-A,Black

After a very extensive search for a laptop cooling pad, I finally found the one. One key feature I was looking for was no lights or at least a way to disable them. This model has a switch on the side just for turning the LEDs on or off. The fans themselves are fine; noise level is reasonable and they do the job. Build quality and price are great.

Based on expectations and price I have given a 5 star rating. This is the also the first time I have purchased a laptop cooling pad so I have nothing to compare it to. I read a lot of reviews, so while I'm not that impressed with this I doubt I'd really be much happier with the other cooling pads I viewed online.One of the primary reasons I purchased this cooling pad was a switch to turn off the lights which for whatever reason most of the others did not have. So that alone eliminated most of the competing products. Although really with the laptop on top of the cooling pad you won't notice the lights at all unless in a very dark room.A second factor was trying to guess which fan layout would likely to best cool my specific laptop (15" Overpowered laptop) based on the location of the bottom vents of the laptop. Chances are it doesn't make a huge difference, but I'd still keep that in mind when checking out different coolers.It fits the Overpowered 15" chassis near perfectly. There is just a little bit extending on the sides, which means a bulkier 15" laptop may hang over some. The Overpowered chassis is relatively compact with somewhat small bezels.The fans are louder than I'd like at the lowest speed, but again I have nothing to compare to. For the price I can't really complain as higher quality fans probably would have cost more. At the lowest speed the fans are audible for sure, but if you don't mind a little noise it isn't a big deal. Noise increases a good amount as you increase fan speed, but it never gets all that loud. The fans don't push much air at any setting which was expected based on the reviews of this cooling pad as well as just about every other one. Unfortunately I haven't really watching temps, but I'd guess it averages about 7 degrees cooler which helps a good amount but it would be nice if it did a little more. I got the cooler as I run the laptop basically all day with several virtual machines. Although it is a gaming laptop I haven't done much gaming on it yet, so I have no idea if it might make a bigger difference when pushing the system with demanding games.The included USB cable is a bit long, but that is understandably necessary to support different locations of USB ports on laptops. I bought a 6 inch USB cable to keep from having a cable dangling so that was an added expense.So without having personal experience with other cooling pads, I don't feel I have any reason to take any stars away. I'm not unhappy at all with my purchase aside from wishing it was more silent, but if I was buying a second cooling pad I'd definitely take another look at other options before just buying a second one of these. If keeping my requirement of no lighting (or a switch to disable it like this has) there really aren't many alternatives though. Most likely I made the right choice buying this cooling pad over the others on Amazon.

Noisier than expected and low airflow

Using this to cool a 16" Alienware laptop with a high-end Intel and a 4080 discrete graphics card. Use it mostly for video editing but play maybe 1 game on it. When I edit I switch the laptop into "Performance Mode" to get the most out of the graphics card and the CPU. It gets HOT, fast! This cooler seems to keep everything below critical temps, and so far, all the components are happy. I would have liked a separate power supply however, because it does use up one of your USB A ports. If you don't HAVE USB A (looking at you, Apple) then you'll need an A-to-C adapter to power this, or another USB powered hub it can plug in to. I'd also note that the actual "cooling" grate is in the center and goes 98% of the way to the left and right edges, but it has a 2" or so border at top and bottom of the surface that is solid so NOT cooling. My laptop gets hottest on the top 3" (above the keyboard) likely due to the GPU, so I can't use the pop-out retention clips at the bottom of the cooler, I have to slide my laptop down so the hottest part is over the cooling holes. Something to keep in mind if your laptop, like mind, gets hottest along the top edge.

When searching for a laptop cooling pad I focused on the brands I'm familiar with that know PC cooling.This product from Thermaltake checked all the boxes - on paper that is.However, the Thermaltake Massive 12 is a disappointment.The good: It's all plastic of course, but it feels well built and high quality. It's lightweight and thin enough to be comfortable on your lap. The fan speed is adjustable. Really I think you'd only want to use it to adjust the noise level. No one ever said "My laptop has too much cooling - I want less."The bad (and plenty of it): Let's start with the fan speed adjustment. This is not a big deal to me but some may find it to be. The LEDs are built into the fan and get the same power source as the fans. When you turn down the fan speed, you turn down the brightness of the LEDs. Again, doesn't bother me, but something to make note of if the LEDs are your thing.Every decent cooling product out there - whether it's for PC or laptop - uses fans to pull the heat out and away from the machine. This one... They decided to push air INTO the laptop.It's even right there in the last product photo (which I should've paid more attention to). It shows the air flow coming up and into the laptop with the hope of pushing hot air out. But it just doesn't work that way. The fans should run in reverse to pull the hot air out.Another questionable design decision is the open bottom of the cooling pad. It brings cool air in to push up into the laptop but this really only works if the cooler is on a flat surface like a desk. If you want to use this on your lap, a lot of the air flow is going to be blocked.All in all - I wanted to love this laptop cooler but really - it just doesn't do what it's supposed to do. It doesn't cool my laptop, which still runs hot because it's not pulling hot air out, it's just pushing air in and hoping hot air moves out.I debated on my overall star rating - First I gave it 3 because it looks good and feels good. But then I changed it to a 2 because yeah, it is well made but it doesn't really cool.After more thought I gave it 1 start because I bought this to do one thing - cool my laptop. It doesn't do that and everything else is irrelevant at this point.