Zalman ZM-NC3500 Plus Notebook Cooler Review

A common problem with notebooks, laptops and netbooks is that they can heat up and become noisy, or sometimes even overheat and shutdown. This is more of an issue with larger notebooks, of the 15.6″ and 17″ variety, as they normally contain more power hungry hardware. Zalman, the Korean cooling specialists, have long been developing notebook cooling solutions. The latest in their extensive range of notebook coolers that they have sent us to review is the ZM-NC3500 Plus notebook cooler.

The Zalman ZM-NC3500 is more than just a mere notebook cooler. Offering up a four port USB 2.0 hub, dual channel integrated speakers with their own USB sound card and a 220mm low noise cooling fan – this really is one of the most feature packed notebook coolers on the market.

Zalman are a company expanding into more and more markets these days – power supplies, graphics cards, SSDs, CPU coolers, monitors, water cooling, cases and of course notebook coolers. Apologies if we missed anything but Zalman really do it all! However, with all that said Zalman still pride themselves on specialising in cooling innovations so we have really high expectations of this notebook cooler.

In order to put this notebook through its paces we’re going to take a detailed look at its USB hub performance, the quality of the integrated sound, its cooling performance and acoustics.

Before we get going with looking at the packaging, test set up and methodology – we first want to show you a quick overview of the product specifications so you know the basics of what we are actually bringing you: