Provides: Laptop heat management
Developer: Moshi
Minimum Requirements: MacBook or MacBook Pro
Price: $75-$86
Availability: Now
Let’s face it; Apple makes some pretty hot stuff (if you know what I mean). And you might be concerned, you know, for various reasons about your notebook heating your… well, you know. Apple might insist on calling them notebooks, but we all know they’re laptops, and what are you going to do to keep your lap cool besides wearing crazy pants? The answer is increased air flow, and the way to get it is with Moshi’s Zefyr.
The Zefyr comes in two sizes: the regular one for MacBooks, and the Pro for, you guessed it, MacBook Pros. It’s essentially a large metal heat sink with a fan powered by USB. It draws air over it’s heat sink, and pushes the heat out like criminals only dream of.
You might notice that the Zefyr looks fantastic. I imagine its brushed aluminum structure is designed to maximize surface area in order to dissipate heat, but somehow they made it sexy, too. It comes collapsed so it can more easily fit in a bag, but expands to cover the width of your notebook with a slight tug.
When you’re ready to make your Mac cool (like it wasn’t cool already right?) just pull out the USB plug, position the Zefyr underneath the back side of your MacBook and plug in the USB. Immediately, the fan will start blowing, and blowing, and blowing. Come back in an hour and you can bet it will still be blowing. For real, this thing blows.
This brings me to annoyance number one. It never stops blowing, ever. I like the idea that this thing keeps my MacBook Pro cooler, but at some point, it could stop blowing for a bit. The fan is a bit distracting, and it makes it feel like your Mac is crunching numbers constantly. Now, you could just unplug it, but the USB plug has a passthrough, so you might be forced to unplug something important along with it. I’d like to see an on/off switch on this guy instead. Also, I don’t particularly like the USB passthrough. It sticks out too far and honestly scares me that I’m going to break something; either the USB port or one of my cables. I’d much rather see this be even more useful by having a USB hub built into the body and a super shallow USB plug. Multi-use products are awesome!
OK, I’m done complaining, because this thing actually works. Moshi claims about 10°F of difference, but I have no way of actually verifying that number. What I can say is that it noticeably reduced the temperature of my MacBook Pro (even on the top side). Now, I don’t often use my MacBook Pro on my lap, but if I did, this would be one of the best ways to reduce the heat. Just don’t move around too much, since there’s nothing holding the Zefyr in place. Some arms on the side would be nice, but this way it works for just about all notebooks, so you have to live with some compromises.
Should you buy it? If you’re worried about your, um, legs getting hot, then yes. It works and it’s sexy, plus people will ask you about it since it looks so cool. Come on, do it for the kids! But the price is pretty steep, so you might decide to just save your money stay hot. And being hot is not a crime.
Would it be possible for you to use iStat Pro to check to see if it lives up the 10C that moshi claims?
Hey thanks Userblah, that was a really great idea! I let my MBP run normally all day, recorded the temps then hooked up the Zefyr for a good half an hour. Here's the data from iStat (it's somewhat surprising, though ultimately not very scientific).
MBP w/ Zefyr
HD 94 92
CPU A 176 166
Enclosure Base 88 90
Enclosure Base 2 88 90
Enclosure Base 3 85 85
GPU 149 151
GPU Diode 171 169
GPU Heatsink 130 128
So you can see that the CPU definitely reflects a 10 degree change, though some temps actually went up. You have to remember that this isn't the temperature of the bottom of the Zefyr, so that is likely much lower than the bottom of the MBP case. Still very interesting though.