Laptop heating is a common issue, most often experienced by gamers and creative professionals who use their high laptops for longer sessions. Since a high-end gaming laptop draws a lot more power than ordinary laptops under $400 for running high-end CPUs, power-hungry graphics cards, and motherboards, it releases a large amount of heat.
Though the released heat is dissipated by the heat pipes and fans to keep the laptop cool, not every laptop remains cool under the workload. Every company claims to manufacture high-performance machines that don’t overheat under stress, but just a few hold their claim especially Apple, Lenovo, Acer, and ASUS, to name a few.
And, if you use the laptop for the whole day, you need a laptop that doesn’t heat up and remains cool even under pressure and performs most efficiently to deliver maximum cooling to its interior compartments.
Considering the laptop heating issues, we have listed the six most efficient and coolest laptops for gaming, productivity, graphics design, 4K batch video rendering, etc. Before making any decision, think again about the basic purpose for which you are buying a laptop, as some laptops are best for productivity while others may be best for gaming, graphics design, or video editing.
What Causes A Laptop to Overheat?
Overheating issues may be caused by a variety of factors, such as a defective battery, design flaws, clogged vents, or even a high processor power consumption. Plus, when the laptops are overloaded working beyond their limits, they will overheat. You might experience laptop overheating or stuttering if you multitask on it. When you are performing heavy tasks, you will put the laptop under pressure.
One of the most attractive aspects of the best laptops is their powerful and efficient processors, a large amount of RAM, large hard drive space, one of the highest quality graphics cards, and intelligent cooling design that helps them avoid overheating. So, before purchasing a laptop, it is crucial to study the user reviews carefully to avoid buying one prone to overheating issues. Besides, using a cooling pad can help cool your laptop if it is overheating.
6 Best laptops that don’t overheat
Here are the best laptops that don’t overheat while gaming, or for regular use.
1. Apple MacBook Pro
2. Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i
3. Acer Nitro 5 Gaming
4. ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro X
5. Microsoft Surface Book 3
6. Razer Blade 15 Advance Edition
1. Apple MacBook Pro M1
Reasons to Buy
Reasons to Avoid
The Apple MacBook Pro is no doubt the most compelling laptop that delivers a killer combo of epic performance, long battery life, and remains cool even under heavy load. If you are a businessman, a student, a video editor, or a daily laptop user who requires a laptop that never heats up even under extreme load while editing videos, developing software, watching UHD movies, or playing 1080p games, the Apple MacBook Pro won’t disappoint you in any case.
Thanks to its M1chip the MacBook Pro is still an unbeatable competitor in terms of performance, durability, and efficient heat management. I am very much confident as I have been using this laptop for a while and I haven’t noticed heating issues even while playing games, editing videos for my Youtube channel, or doing some other stuff while keeping the laptop over my lap for the whole time.
The performance is also uncompromising, thanks to its M1 chip that is a huge improvement in CPU, GPU, and machine learning. The lags are unnoticeable as the machine comes with an 8-core CPU and GPU which are twice faster than traditional processors. The GPU keeps the whole setup cool while doing graphics-intensive tasks. I could hardly notice my lap getting warm when I was playing Call of Duty: Warzone in medium settings, and I didn’t need to use a lapdesk.
The best part about MacBook Pro is its battery life. Delivering the performance at its peak the battery can last more up to 20 hours that means you can use it for the whole day in one charge, making it one of the best laptops with the longest battery life.
Overall, the MacBook Pro is the coolest laptop in the market, thanks to its Active cooling system that prevents the machine from heating up under intensive workload. The machine lets you remove barriers to getting things done without an issue.
2. Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i
Reasons to Buy
Reasons to Avoid
No doubt the Lenovo’s gaming laptops are available under the tag of Legion, some of the budget laptops with reasonable good performance and excellent cooling features are available under the flag of IdeaPad. The IdeaPad Gaming 3i is undoubtedly a perfect combo of budget price, casual gaming in 120Hz (FHD) display, and a decent cooling system.
The machine is the best budget choice that offers the best cooling system at a minimum price, thanks to its Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPUTi that doesn’t let the system warm up under a heavy workload. Compared to other low-budget machines, this one performs much better and faster.
Feature-wise, the laptop comes with GTX 1650Ti graphics card, 15.6 inch 1080p FHD IPS Display, a 720p HD webcam, 3 USB ports, Intel Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, LAN, HDMI 2.0, and 3.5mm audio jack. The features are handy for smooth casual gaming and to do office-centric tasks especially, spreadsheets, web browsing, and video conferencing.
We didn’t notice a single lag while playing some high-fidelity titles such as Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Far Cry 5 at medium to high settings and 1080p resolution. Plus, the heating-up issue was not seen during gaming while the laptop was on battery use.
Now, come to the battery and cooling mechanism. The battery drains out faster while gaming than doing some regular office work. If you are not doing some graphics-intensive tasks, the battery lasts through most of the day. The Rapid Charge technology, however, saves a lot of time in recharging the battery.
Under extreme loads and after hours of workload, the laptop registers temperatures in the range of 40-50 degrees. This is much lower than most of the gaming and office laptops which release more than 70 degrees under heavy load. Plus, the temperatures remain in the safe range in normal use.
All in all, if you are a new gamer who wants to have a budget laptop for casual gaming as well as an office job, the IdeaPad Gaming 3i is the best choice you can make.
3. Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop
Reasons to Buy
Reasons to Avoid
If you are a gamer looking for a cool gaming laptop under a tight budget, the Acer Nitro 5 is the best gaming laptop you can have. The laptop comes with all the features to handle the most demanding games.
Powered with a 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9300H, a GTX 1650 graphics card, an 8GB RAM, and a customizable dual-fan cooling system, the laptop ensures that you are going to have a comfortable and cool gaming experience without going too far in terms of heat.
Plus the 1080p IPS screen and long battery life let you play UHD games for hours. But remember that you won’t see a sharper difference in terms of frame rates as the machine normally maintains a 60Hz refresh rate instead of delivering a 120Hz or faster refresh rate. Even though this is not the best gaming laptop, it can handle all the games at 1080p settings while keeping itself cool.
Above that, the specs let you do the day-to-day tasks such as running business apps, photos and videos editing, web browsing, document editing, and video streaming without a problem.
From a performance perspective, we tested this laptop on games especially Gears Tactics (at 90fps) Doom Eternal, and Star Wars. The temperatures were impressively down compared to other high-end laptops like Dell G5 (not to be confused with the Dell G5 desktop). Though the games were played at medium settings, the laptop didn’t emit a lot of heat for the whole day. The temps didn’t reach beyond the limits of 50 °C under extreme load which is normal as the graphics card consumes a lot of power to deliver performance.
For the whole gaming and day-to-day tasks, the battery levels don’t drop dramatically. Rather, the Acer Nitro 5 delivers a decent battery life of 6 hours. That is to say, with just three charges you can enjoy using the laptop for the whole day.
Overall, as the Acer Nitro 5 is equipped with tons of cooling vents, the laptop promises a silent operation while remaining cool for the whole day. In short, the cooling management system is really impressive.
4. ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro X
Reasons to Buy
Reasons to Avoid
The ProArt StudioBook Pro 17 is a perfect replacement for a high-end desktop for creative professionals. In fact, the ASUS ProArt 17 is a beast packed in a small case that is competent enough to handle every task from CAD to 3D video rendering and streaming to graphics-intensive gaming.
Equipped with a six-core Xeon processor, Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU, 64GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, and an impressive display, the laptop enables you to do anything you want to do in a minimum possible time. While doing all these tasks the laptops maintain a bearable temperature, thanks to the two well-built fans that don’t let the exterior be very hot.
While testing, it was found that this laptop is best for content creators who need a power-hungry laptop to do graphic-intensive tasks. Plus, no one would like to have a laptop that causes second-degree burns while placing it on the lap for a long time. So, this is truly a high-end laptop that hides powerful specifications to meet the appetite in an amalgamation of aluminum and plastic matte chassis.
Similar to other workstations the Pro 17 is purely built for heavy-duty tasks, so don’t expect it to be a cheaper laptop. Rather, this is a much expensive option that can pass any stress tests ranging from performance to durability. Of course, it performs impressively better than any high-end laptop cutting through times for batch 4K video rendering, AutoCad drawings, and gaming at ultra settings.
Though the laptop releases heat while performing graphics-loaded tasks, the heat is unnoticeable due to the two heavy-duty fans, multiple heat pipes, and the heat plates releasing temps without heating the exterior plastic case. Even we noticed CPU and GPU temps in the range of 60 degrees while playing the Witcher 3, Far Cry 5, GTA 5, and COD: Modern Warfare, and Fortnite at FHD settings.
However, even with the laptop’s compact footprint, the cooling system is capable of extracting impressive performance from the components. While running Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, and other such apps, you won’t observe even a single drop of sweat while placing the laptop over the lap. This is what makes it the coolest laptop. Instead of gaming, we would recommend it for high-end productivity tasks.
From the negatives, the laptop is very much expensive due to its high-end specs. This is not the quietest laptop as the fans get louder under stress to release the heat outside, and considering the specs, the battery drains out quickly compared to the MacBook Pro and IdeaPad Gaming 3i.
Overall, the Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X comes with features guaranteeing impeccable performance and a greater level of productivity. From the utility perspective, this is a comparatively much cooler mobile workstation recommended for professionals who do a lot of work the whole day.
5. Microsoft Surface Book 3
Reasons to Buy
Reasons to Avoid
Want to show off with a powerful laptop having a gorgeous design and long battery life? Here is the Microsoft SurfaceBook 3 – a 2-in-1 laptop as well as a notebook alternative. The laptop offers an elegant design packed with a removable keyboard and premium performance packed in 13inch and 15inch chassis.
As the Surface Book 3 comes with 13-inch and 15-inch display options, the latter one has a good amount of customization options. It comes with a 10th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with a 1.3GHz base clock speed, 16GB of RAM, 256 GB of SSD, and Nvidia Powered GTX 1660 Ti GPU. Next, the laptop offers a USB 3.1 USB-C port, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and a Surface Connect port for charging purposes.
For content creators and design pros who need a top of the line performance, this might not be the choice. Instead, you should go for the Dell XPS 15 that offers high-end specs in the same design. But, if you want to have a comfortable laptop with an excellent cooling system, this is the right choice in every case. However, the point worth mentioning is that none of the competitors has a flexible design as offered by the Surface Book 3.
On the performance side, the Surface Book 3 performs impressively on CPU-intensive content-creation tasks. Besides, the benchmarks show that the machine can let you play GTA V, Shadow of Tomb Raider, and The Witcher 3 at 1080p high settings. The GTX 1660Ti yields a good amount of power that is sufficient to play games at 60fps.
The battery life is also comparatively much better as the battery lasts for 11 hours on a single charge which involves playing 720p videos at moderate screen brightness. But when you are doing some other tasks like converting 4K videos, word processing, video calling, or playing UHD games, the battery life reduces to 9-10 hours depending on the battery usage. So, if you work 8 hours a day, the laptop is the best companion that will never disappoint you – neither in terms of performance nor battery life.
In terms of thermals, the laptop stays cool while running. This is because all the power-hungry components are present in the tablet section and that keeps the lower sections especially, the keyboard, touchpad, and the bottom within the comfort threshold. However, the tablet may get warm when playing 1080p games at high settings.
The downsides include the tiny trackpad that makes moving the cursor a bit difficult for persons with large hands. Second, though the processor and GPU are good enough for creative workloads, they aren’t the most powerful ones.
All in all, if you are a casual gamer who needs a premium 2-in-1 laptop packed with an elegant design, the Surface Book 3 is the best choice you can make. Though it is not the most powerful laptop, it packs enough power to allow you to do regular tasks like playing 4K media, watching favorite shows and movies, and creating 4K content without any problem.
6. Razer Blade 15 Advance Edition
Reasons to Buy
Reasons to Avoid
Considering how long Razer laptops have existed, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced is an unexpectedly impressive laptop. With the Razer Blade 15 Advanced, you’ll get a similar gaming experience as most fancy desktops, and it’s as functional as the rest of the Blade line of laptops.
Since the Blade 15 Advance is equipped with high-end specs and powerful components, don’t think it is a cheap laptop that can deliver max performance at a cheaper price. Considering specs, the laptop features, 10th Gen Intel Core i7 processors, fueled with RTX 2080 Super, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD to let you play AAA titles on a 4K display with max settings. The specs make it the best laptop for personal use, multimedia, and gaming purpose. However, for business, we would recommend going for ASUS Pro Art StudioBook X Mobile WorkStation.
Razer Blade 15 Advanced delivers when it comes to gaming performance. In 1080p, the Blade 15 can run up to 60 frames per second, while in QHD, it can deliver more than 60 frames per second.
Blade 15 is often more responsive than competitors in playing games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Red Dead Redemption 2 by delivering more than 100 frames per second. Besides, you can get impressive benchmarks on games that require higher graphics especially the FF XIV, Doom Eternal Age of Empires III, and Baldur’s Gate III. In short, the laptop delivers smooth, fluid gameplay with plenty of colors and impressive graphics.
The Blade 15’s powerful GPU lets it handle anything you can throw at it, including word processing, e-mailing, multimedia, video rendering, and even graphic design. The overall power levels of these machines were impressive, especially given their size, so I’d say I was very satisfied. You can use them not only for serious professional work but also to play games very well.
The Razer Blade 15 Advance also runs hot when playing high-specced games. Since it is because the gaming laptops require a lot of power, a high-end GPU, and the best performing CPU, it’s probably impossible to make a gaming laptop that runs quiet and cool. However, the Razer Blade 15 Advance is comparatively cool and the best gaming laptop that releases a minimum amount of heat under stress.
The Blade 15 Advanced uses a vapor chamber cooling system, which keeps it running cool enough to run. In addition, the fans run loud even when doing some productivity work which can be balanced by tinkering with the Synapse software.
The laptop stays relatively cool when used for normal purposes. If the thermals are set to balance, the CPU temperatures will hover around 40 degrees for most tasks. Even when 60 tabs of Chrome are opened there is a little bit spike in the range of 60 degrees, because the vapor chamber keeps the fans cool.
Concerning the battery life, the Razer Blade 15 delivers a battery life of five hours by surfing the web the whole time. In gaming, the situation is even worse, lasting just under an hour and a half, but gaming laptops can sometimes last less than an hour.
Overall, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced is the best gaming laptop with less thermal benchmarks and the highest performance. The system looks great, has a host of ports, and runs games flawlessly.
Frequently Asked Questions
In case your laptop overheats, you may purchase a cooling pad. Furthermore, cooling pads will only work if they are sized properly for the laptop. When the temperatures are normal, all the laptops will work properly. Moreover, the laptop cooling pads are inexpensive and can be bought online.
Dust or debris inside the laptop may be causing it to overheat. This requires gentle cleaning of the device. The fans won’t overheat if they’re clean. Furthermore, once the fans are clean, they won’t make any noise. Most importantly, when you clean the laptop, you will notice a significant improvement in its performance.
Here is a list of the best laptops that don’t overheat for regular use.
1. Apple MacBook Pro
2. Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i
3. Acer Nitro 5 Gaming
4. ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro X
5. Microsoft Surface Book 3
6. Razer Blade 15 Advance Edition
For productivity and graphics design, the Apple MacBook Pro is the coolest laptop that you can use while placing it on the lap. However, for gaming, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition is the best gaming laptop that doesn’t overheat in regular gaming.
In order to prevent your laptop from overheating, you should place it on a smooth surface such as a metal table or wood table. Make sure the vent holes on the laptop are clear and check the cooling pads. The holes of your laptop mustn’t catch dust. There is a possibility that your laptop’s thermal paste has dried, resulting in overheating.
You need to leave the laptop for a while and ensure that the laptop is getting adequate ventilation from outside. Plus get the best laptop cooling pad to lower the thermals.
Temperatures between 50 and 95 degrees are ideal for a laptop that doesn’t overheat. The temps may vary depending on the surrounding environment. Under any environment, the laptop performs best at a temperature of 70 degrees F.
Games can overheat the laptop sometimes if they are powerful, but they will not alter its speed. To play 4K games smoothly, you should use a dedicated graphics card with the laptop. An overheated laptop can reduce performance and damage certain components.
Temps of 85-90 degrees Fahrenheit or less will not harm a laptop, but if they rise above 95 degrees F, they may go bad. The temperature will not affect your laptop’s GPU, but you’ll have a lower speed. A program may crash, or you may experience an unexpected shutdown.
You will hear a noisy fan if the laptop is overheating. You will have trouble loading files on your laptop or it will stutter. When the laptop’s temperature gets too high, it’s going to have less airflow, which will result in louder noise.
