Vizo Mini Ninja Notebook Cooler Review

Propane - 2008-03-25 12:32:39 in Cooling
Category: Cooling
Reviewed by: Propane   
Reviewed on: May 1, 2008
Price: $ 27.99

Introduction:

A lot of people these days are getting laptops instead of desktops. While a laptop has many benefits over the desktop computer, it also has its drawbacks. One of these drawbacks is heat. A desktop computer has plenty of room to allow air to flow around all the components and enough room to house a large heatsink. Laptops on the other hand, have very limited space because of their mobile nature. This limited space in turn limits air flow, which causes the temperature inside the computer to rise, causing unstable conditions for your laptop.

Devices like the Vizo Mini Ninja have been made to help combat these rising temperatures. These devices typically raise the laptop off the surface of your desk and have fans to increase the airflow around the bottom of the chassis. These combined measures can do wonders to drop the temperature of your laptop, but some do better jobs at it than others. Lets see how the Vizo Mini Ninja performs.

 

Closer Look:

The Vizo Mini Ninja come in pretty standard cardboard packaging. This packaging shows off the product and some of its features. Also, a complete specification sheet is on the back, so you know exactly what you are getting.

 

 

The case also has a handle that can be used to help transport the box to other places after you buy it. Inside the first box is a second box that is unmarked.

 

 

The box opens up like a clam shell and reveals the Mini Ninja. Foam is on the sides to protect the Ninja during shipping. As you can see, the Mini Ninja is black and rather short. There are two fans that help the cooling process, under a silver mesh.

 

 

Closer Look:

The back side of the Vizo Mini Ninja reveals the fans in more detail and also shows how the back of the cooler is taller than the front of the cooler. To get power to the fans, a power port is on the right side. This power port uses an included cable to use USB power to run the fans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The slant of the Vizo Mini Ninja is very obvious from the side. Again, the Vizo and Mini Ninja logos are very clear with their white paint on the black surface. Each of the two fans have the Vizo logo on them and, while they aren't the largest, push enough air to be effective.

 

 

The cable that is used to power the Mini Ninja is a USB to DC power cable. The USB end has a cool feature that allows you to plug in another device so that you don't lose a valuable USB port to the cooler.

 

Installation:

Installing the Vizo Mini Ninja involves two easy steps. The first step being the placing of the laptop on top of the Mini Ninja and the second being the plugging in of the USB power cable. There is no toggle switch or variable fan speed that you need to worry about.

Specifications:

 

Features:

 

All information gatered from Vizos product specifications page at http://www.vizo.com.tw/front/product/get_product_detail/55/3/1

Testing:

The Vizo Mini Ninja has one function and that is to cool the laptop. Since this is the only function, I will run the laptop on and off the cooler, at both idle and load states. This should give me a good idea of how well the cooler works.

Testing Setup:

Comparison Coolers:

 

The first results I will look at are the idle temperatures.

As you can see, it didn't perform as well as some of the other coolers, but still showed an improvement in operating temperature. Now for the load temperatures.

In the load temperatures, the Vizo performed better than the other coolers that I am comparing it to. In the case of the load CPU, it even produced the best temperature.

Conclusion:

The Vizo Mini Ninja is a small and portable way to cool your laptop, which is a haven for heat. While the benefits that the Vizo Mini Ninja provide aren't as varied as some other coolers, it does do its primary job well. In my testing, it actually helped reduce the CPU and GPU load temperatures further than any of the other laptop coolers I have tested. Not just 1 degree Celsius but by 3 on the CPU and 2 on the GPU. A pretty strong cooling performance. Another benefit of the Vizo Mini Ninja is that it does not require a powered USB port to run the fans, meaning that laptops that don't have powered USB can still take advantage of the fans in the cooler. Also, the slight tilt provided to cool the laptop comes with a secondary benefit, ergonomic comfort. Something many people in this technological era can appreciate. Overall I am pretty pleased with how the Mini Ninja preforms. Set at an attractive price point and able to handle larger laptops, how can you go wrong?

 

Pros:

 

Cons: