Most laptop fans are designed to be a kind of stand that you can put the laptop on while you use it. How do you keep a laptop cool when it’s held vertically and used in docked mode? That’s what the Olmaster CF-1691 USB Cooling Fan can do.
This Olmaster fan is a cross-flow type, which means that air is drawn in and expelled perpendicular to the fan shaft. You can use it in a variety of ways, not just for standing laptops, as I’ll come to describe below. Instead of simply laying horizontally on the table, the fan itself can also be positioned vertically, and thus acts as a tower fan.
In one style of operation, you can simply place the back of your laptop on the fan. The rubber pads at the curved top side will prevent the laptop from slipping down. This does raise the laptop at a rather steep angle, much more so than typical USB laptop fans will do.
There are two rubber feet tucked at the bottom. You can pull them out and use them as a stand to hold smartphones or tablets.
There are two slot positions, and you can bring together or pull part the two stands as you need, to accommodate small or larger devices at different angles.
I originally had hoped that my Dell XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 would fit in one of the slots, but alas it was too thick to fit in either of them.
There’s a knob on the side to adjust the fan speed, which can be varied from 2100 to 2900 RPM, or to switch it off.
The fan is is powered with the included USB cable that plugs into a DC barrel jack. I would have preferred a MicroUSB port so I don’t have to worry about losing this cable.
According to specifications, the noise level ranges from 30 to 40 dBA. It is louder than a good quality fan, like the Cooler Master Notepad X-Lite II,. However, the noise might not be much of a bother if when used with a docked laptop, the entire setup doesn’t have to be directly in front of you.
The Olmaster CF-1691 USB Cooling Fan sells for S$26.84 on Lazada.