Reviews: Hardware: The Lapinator
What Is It?
The what? Well bear with me for a few seconds, it’s worth it. The lapinator is a desk/pad that goes between your legs and your laptop.
But Wait, there’s more. The smart folks at this company made the Lapinator out of 3M’s Thinsulate ™ material. Don’t know what Thinsulate is? It’s a space-age insulating material that, like any good insulator, keeps heat or cold away.
If you live in a cold climate, maybe you’ve considered buying pricey Thinsulate Gloves and know what I’m talking about.
Good or Bad?
Actually rather good. Keeps the toaster-hot laptop from burning your legs. Read on for details.
Details
The Lapinator comes in two sizes, Regular and Plus. The Plus is for extra large laptops. I just purchased the regular size direct from the company's website. The full price is $24.95.
For the past 10 months I’ve been much more reliant on my laptop. An hour or so in, it is pretty unbearably hot, not to mention that the vent is in a really stupid place (thank you Sony) and easy to block. The result: Permanently sweaty legs, and that not so fresh feeling.
Enter the Lapinator. After doing some research on general lap-desks, I found a couple of positive reviews for this product and decided to give it a shot. The $24.95 price tag seemed a little pricey at first, but there’s a generous 20% discount if you buy more than one (and my wife has the same problem with her Toshiba, so I needed two of them anyway).
They were shipped swiftly and arrived a couple of days later.
The first impression was so so. It seemed a little light and flimsy and the “instructions” were a badly photocopied piece of paper. Hmmm. Not that I really need instructions for a lapdesk, but that seems kinda cheesey.
But then I broke out the laptop. It’s a Sony Vaio PCG 7N2L – or a typical 14” screen Intel Pro Duo type of laptop. In other words it can get hot. The laptop had already been on for several hours before I started this test. 30 minutes after I put the Lapinator between me and the laptop there was no noticeable increase in temperature whatsoever . Pretty impressive.
It’s now 3 1/2 hours later and my legs are feeling a bit warm. Not hot, just warm. BUT touching the bottom of the Lapinator revealed that actually, the heat is coming from the aforementioned stupidly place vent on the laptop. The bottom of the Lapinator is barely warm at all.
Conclusion
In short, this thing seems to work very well. It should, as Thinsulate is a great product. If you’re tired of Laptop SLS (sweaty leg syndrome), it’s worth the money.