Compal BreezePro concept laptop is designed for enhanced cooling

Brad Linder

Liliputing


Compal BreezePro concept laptop is designed for enhanced cooling

You can stuff as powerful a chip as you want in a laptop, but if the notebook doesn’t have a cooling system to keep that chip from overheating, you’re likely to see performance throttling.

Some high-performance laptops tackle this with advanced features like liquid or vapor chamber cooling, or high-tech fans. But Compal’s new BreezePro concept presents another possible solution: moving the vents from the bottom of the laptop to the top and using an unusual keyboard design that gives the BreezePro laptop extra room to breath.

Here’s the basic idea: when the laptop’s lid is closed, the computer folds flat. But lift the lid and the back of the keyboard tilts upward and away from the base of the notebook, revealing two vents that would otherwise be hidden.

This gives the keyboard a slight downward slope, while allowing air to be drawn into the vents, where it’s circulated by the computer’s fans and then ejected through a vent in the back of the PC.

Compal says that traditional notebook cooling systems which draw air upward through vents in the bottom of the case can “block and trap hot air when placed on any surface” such as a table, desk, or lap. That wouldn’t be an issue with the BreezePro, since the vents would always be exposed to the air.

Of course, the tilting keyboard could present other problems. It’s unclear how stable the keyboard will be when typing. It’s easy to imagine that folks who hammer hard on keys would find it uncomfortable to type on a system that wobbles while you work. There’s also no word on how sturdy the system is. The extra gap could make it easy for dirt or dust to get trapped between the keyboard and base of the computer, for example.

Right now the BreezePro appears to be little more than a concept. Compal is an equipment designer and manufacturer that doesn’t typically sell products under its own name, and instead produced hardware for other companies. But Compal submitted the concept as an entry into the the IF Design Award 2022 competition, which is where I found details about the BreezePro. Note that some of the images appear to be pretty awkwardly Photoshopped.

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