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OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler review: Funky and effective

OPOLAR LC-06 is not your average laptop cooler. It's funky, but does it work? Let's find out in our full review.
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Published onNovember 16, 2020

OPOLAR LC 06 front view 3
Joe Hindy / Android Authority

Most laptop coolers operate on a similar premise. You place your laptop on top and fans drive cool air into the intake vents. The cool air helps keep things under control and prevents overheating. OPOLAR, however, takes a different approach. Its laptop cooler product doesn’t shoot air into your machine. Instead, it draws air out of most laptops. The OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler has a funky design and some neat features, but does it actually work? Let’s find out.

What is the OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler?

OPOLAR LC 06 in use
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
The OPOLAR LC-06 is a laptop cooler. It uses silicon vent covers to create a suction effect with the output vents on your laptop. The fans draw the air out and shoot it out of the back of the cooler. As a result, the OPOLAR cooler has one of the most unique designs of any laptop cooler we’ve seen.

The device is fairly small and fits in the palm of a large hand. The front has a spot to attach the soft silicon piece that eventually makes the seal around your laptop. Around the back is the output vent. The top of the device features an on/off button and two buttons to increase or decrease the fan power. We don’t know the size of the fans, but they run at 2,600 RPM at the lowest setting and 5,000 RPM at the highest.

You can attach the device to your laptop by one of two methods. The first is a detachable plastic lip with little suction cups. It temporarily attaches the cooler to your laptop while also seating it to your desk so it doesn’t move. The second method uses M3 tape to permanently attach the cooler to your laptop. We only recommend the permanent installation method once you confirm this product works for you.

Finally, OPOLAR LC-06 also comes with a display. It shows the temperature of the air being pulled through the cooler. You can long-press the power button once the device is on to switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius. You can also use the display to make sure the device is actually pulling the warm air out of your laptop.

How to set up and use the OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler

OPOLAR LC 06 in the box
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
The OPOLAR LC-06 has a more complicated setup than most laptop coolers. The box comes with three silicon shrouds, the previously mentioned plastic lip with the suction cups, and the M3 tape setup. You need to find the silicon shroud that best fits your laptop output vent, attach it to the cooler, and then use either the plastic tongue or tape to seat it to your computer. There are also adjustable plastic legs with rubber covers to help hold the cooler in place, along with the plastic tongue and the M3 tape.

The device attaches to your laptop via USB. There is no USB pass-through, but the cable is detachable so you can replace it if it breaks. You’ll need a Micro USB to USB Type-A cable if you want to replace it. Once your laptop is on, the device starts automatically. You can then long-press the power button to set Fahrenheit or Celsius and the other two buttons to increase or decrease the fan power. The fans have 13 levels of power, more than virtually any other laptop cooler.

Related: The best cheap gaming laptops to buy in 2020

The installation method has a few issues, however. For starters, many laptops have multiple output vents, especially gaming laptops. Usually, there is one for the CPU and one for the GPU at a minimum. You may need to Google Search for information about your laptop to know which vent is the one you need. We have also seen people buy multiple OPOLAR LC-06 devices to attach to both output vents for even more effective cooling. Those setups tend to look ridiculous, but they do work.

On the plus side, the unique installation method doesn’t have a size limitation. You can attach this thing to a 13-inch laptop or a 19-inch laptop and not have to worry about overhang, extra space, or other size issues.

How well does the OPOLAR Laptop Fan Cooler perform?

OPOLAR LC 06 front view
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
I tested the OPOLAR LC-06 with my ASUS ROG G731GW 17.3-inch gaming laptop with 16GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GTX 2070, an Intel i7-9750H, a 500GB NVMe drive, and a second 500GB SSD. The cooler fit the vent just fine, although it took a little fine-tuning to get the silicon shroud to fit without any gaps. The one difficult part of this was I was never quite sure if this was actually doing what I wanted it to do, even though the display clearly showed that hot air was passing through.

We ran a total of four tests with the OPOLAR LC-06:

  • BIOS test The BIOS is often very poorly optimized so we test to see if the cooler can keep temperatures down.
  • Windows 10 idle Once the laptop is fully booted, we test the cooler to see if it affects idle temperatures. We leave it on idle for ten minutes to ensure it can hold those temperatures.
  • CPU stress test We use Intel XTU’s native stress test because we can easily identify things like temperature, whether or not it thermal throttled or power throttled, and the average CPU clock speed. We ran the test for ten minutes.
  • One game of Halo Wars 2 Halo Wars 2 is a surprisingly heavy game and, on my ASUS ROG G731GW, temps often spike up to the mid-90C range with GPU temps reading the mid-80C range. It’s actually the reason I volunteered to test laptop coolers.
  • Something to note During the explanations below I often refer to power throttling and thermal throttling. Thermal throttling is the laptop forcibly lowering CPU speeds to cool itself down. That’s what laptop coolers are supposed to prevent. Power throttling limits the CPU to its base TDP and prevents it from drawing extra (boost) power.

All tests were conducted with the laptop set to Windows Balanced power settings with no modifications. The cooler was set to its highest possible settings for the best possible cooling numbers. The temperatures were recorded and double-checked with HWMonitor, ASUS Armoury Crate, and Intel XTU.

Without further delay, here are the results of the tests.

TestCPU tempGPU tempFan speed
Test
BIOS without cooler
CPU temp
50C
GPU temp
NA
Fan speed
2800RPM

Test
Idle in Windows 10 without cooler
CPU temp
45C
GPU temp
39C
Fan speed
2400RPM

Test
CPU stress test via Intel XTU without cooler
CPU temp
85C
GPU temp
42C
Fan speed
6400RPM (max)
Power throttle after 60 seconds, thermal throttle after 90 seconds. Throttled CPU speed is 3.2Ghz
Test
One game of Halo Wars 2 without cooler
CPU temp
90C
GPU temp
80C
Fan speed
6400RPM (max)
CPU spikes up to 96C, GPU spikes up to 84C
Test
BIOS with cooler
CPU temp
49C
GPU temp
NA
Fan speed
2800 RPM

Test
Idle in Windows 10 with cooler
CPU temp
42C
GPU temp
39C
Fan speed
2000RPM

Test
CPU stress test with cooler
CPU temp
80C
GPU temp
42C
Fan speed
6400RPM (max)
Power throttle after 90 seconds. No thermal throttle detected. Throttled CPU speed is 3.6Ghz.
Test
One game of Halo Wars 2 with cooler
CPU temp
87C
GPU temp
78C
Fan speed
6400RPM (max)
CPU spikes up to 92C, GPU spikes up to 78C.

The OPOLAR LC-06 did a surprisingly decent job. I had it attached to the CPU vent (with the temporary install method) so the GPU temperatures didn’t change all that much. The biggest gains were during intense activities, including a 5C swing during stress testing and a 3C swing during gaming. I actually played a second game of Halo Wars 2 with the cooler attached to the GPU vent and saw an impressive 6C swing in the GPU temps when accounting for spikes.

It doesn’t seem like a lot but there is more to unpack. During the CPU test, the laptop didn’t register a thermal throttle at all with the cooler. Additionally, when it power throttled, the clock speed remained 0.4-0.5Ghz higher while still maintaining a 5C lower temperature versus without a cooler. The test results conclusively show that the OPOLAR cooler actually works. However, for maximum benefits, I would’ve needed a second one to vent out the CPU and GPU at the same time.

What I like about the OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler

  • The unique design lends itself to a different approach to laptop cooling. As long as it fits the vents, it fits any size laptop.
  • Above-average cooling.
  • You can double up to cool better if you have multiple vents. Or you can move one around if needed. For instance, putting it on your CPU vent while rendering video and then switching it to your GPU while playing games.
  • Helpful display shows you that it’s pulling hot air out.
  • 13 fan speeds ranging from silent to nuclear gives you a lot of control over cooling capabilities.

What I don’t like about the OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler

  • It doesn’t fit all laptops, desk setups, and lifestyles. OPOLAR has a helpful graphic on its website and the Amazon listing showing the kinds of laptops this doesn’t work with. We highly recommend checking it out. It also doesn’t work with super-thin laptops like some modern MacBooks and Ultrabooks.
  • It’s very portable, but only if you use the temporary install method. Permanently installed OPOLAR coolers make your laptop very awkward to carry.
  • No USB pass-through in an era where USB ports come at a premium even on gaming laptops.

Is the OPOLAR LC-06 Laptop Fan Cooler good?

OPOLAR LC 06 rear view fully assembled
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
The OPOLAR LC-06 is a reasonably okay cooler. I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect this thing to do any actual cooling. I still can’t believe it actually does work. In fact, this is the only laptop cooler I reviewed where I ran every test twice to make sure I wasn’t screwing it up somehow. This thing competes with the laptop cooling pad crowd, but it doesn’t do it any better or worse. The company boasts 15-50F in cooling, but we imagine your laptop has to have some pretty awful built-in thermal solutions to hit those kinds of numbers.

The difficult part is making sure it actually fits your laptop, your desk, and your lifestyle. After that, it’s a matter of setting it up to your tastes. We recommend people who travel a lot restrict their installations to the temporary method so they can remove it from the laptop and place it in a bag. It’s virtually impossible not to break it otherwise.

Read next: The best gaming laptops money can buy

The only other potential caveat is that the OPOLAR LC-06 pulls air out from the vents by force. Your vents connect directly to your CPU and GPU fans. There is a small risk that the cooler puts undue stress on your existing laptop cooling fans and causes early failure. Otherwise, this is a really neat little product that does actually work.

Finally, OPOLAR actually has a slightly cheaper (and older) version of this on Amazon for $24.99. The only real difference is the lack of a lit-up display. It’s honestly not worth the difference in price to go with the older version. If you go with this type of cooler, spend the $29.99 (prices may vary) on the latest version with the display.

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