Evercool Zodiac II Notebook Cooler

The Zodiac II

The Zodiac II looks really sharp and feels very well made. The platform is made from solid 2.2mm aluminum. The model tested is painted white with black accents around each of the zodiac symbol vents. The Zodiac II name is printed in the center of the fan vent in black and blue. The Evercool name is printed on the bottom right of the platform in metallic silver. Underneath the platform is a black plastic component casing that houses the 12 cm sleeve bearing fan, two USB ports, additional 5V DC power port, and on/off switch with an LED. The cooler rests on the front and rear edges of the platform. At each of the four corners is a small plastic foot to keep it sturdy.



The retractable USB cable provided is simply a USB ribbon cable on a retraction wheel. Give a quick tug on each end and the cable retracts to keep it neat.



To use the Zodiac II, connect the USB cable to one of the USB ports on the left side of the cooler to one of the USB ports on a laptop and flip the power switch. There are two USB ports on the Zodiac II, so a port isn’t lost to power the device. Once turned on, the blue LEDs underneath each zodiac symbol illuminate and create a really nice effect.



The Zodiac II elevates slightly toward that back and is comfortable to use on a flat surface or lap. It weighs a little over a pound, so it’s easy to move around with. Unfortunately, the feet on the bottom of the cooler fell off the first time it was used. Luckily, it was the only quality inconsistency with the Zodiac II construction.

Cooling

The initial tests took place with an HP Elitebook 6930p with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 with 2GB of RAM. Measurements were taken during both idle and full load. In order to hold the processor at 100% utilization, we transcoded some video using Avidemux. Temperature measurements were taken using Speedfan. Each test was run for an hour. Here are the results:



Unfortunately, the numbers didn’t change by much but a few degrees while using the Zodiac II. Even stranger, it appears that having the Zodiac II on during idle actually made the laptop hotter. Using these numbers, the Zodiac II appears to work better as a passive cooler. We found this to be really disappointing considering the Zodiac II appeared to be a well constructed quality device. So, we ran each of the tests using a second laptop to verify the results. The second laptop is an HP Pavilion ze5460us with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512MB of RAM. Here are the results:



This time the Zodiac II made a bigger difference during idle, but during full load, we saw the same problem that using the Zodiac II can actually make a laptop hotter. Based on the results of both tests it’s safe to say that the Zodiac II's cooling ability is inconsistent. As a passive cooler, it always brought temperatures lower, but not drastic enough to deem it highly effective.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the Zodiac II just didn’t deliver in performance. It consistently brought temperatures lower as a passive cooler, but not enough to impress. This is a really big disappointment because it seems to be well made with quality materials. The Zodiac II retails for only around $25 (Amazon Link) and we really wanted to like the it, but nifty motif and flashy lights isn’t enough. Based solely on it’s performance we just can’t recommend it.

ASE Labs would like to thank Evercool for making this review possible.