Stands That Keep Your Lap—and Laptop—Cool

Laptops may be convenient, but the heat they produce often makes them uncomfortable to use where their name suggests you should. Enter the cooling tray, which usually comes equipped with a USB-powered fan to keep your legs from getting scorched. Katherine Boehret runs down a few choices in the Wall Street Journal.

• Logitech Cooling Pad N100: the least noisy of the powered pads, "so quiet that it was hard to tell if it was on"—and, at $30, one of the cheapest.

• Microsoft Notebook Cooling Base: also $30, smaller than the Logitech but with a louder fan and more of a drain on the battery.
• Belkin Notebook Cooling Pad: similar to Microsoft's in size, price, and battery drain, but louder still.
• Belkin Laptop Cooling Lounge: at $50, the priciest model, and the loudest, but "I ignored the noise because it was so comfortable." Highly adjustable.
• Kensington LiftOff: at $20, the cheapest model—it has no fan. Very portable, but not as effective at cooling as the others.

(More consumer electronics stories.)