Logitech Comfort Lapdesk for notebooks

Pocket-lint

By Chris Hall

Published Jan 28, 2009

The picture of your modern lifestyle probably sees you sitting on the sofa using your laptop. Why? Because you decided to ditch that self assembly “computer desk” long ago, along with your desktop PC, pursuing a clean, minimalist, look to your “cosy” flat. Can the Logitech Comfort Lapdesk maximise your productivity on the couch?

Perching your laptop on your knees whilst working brings with it a number of inherent problems. The first of these is heat. Many PCs, you’ll notice, have plenty of vents on the bottom to help draw through air and cool the system down, usually aided by a fan somewhere about the chassis. When you dump it on your legs, a cushion or the duvet, you are blocking the ventilation so the machine will run hot. Okay, so during intensive tasks they’ll run pretty hot anyway, but allowing better ventilation will help keep this in check. Of course, if you have it on your knee, you may find it is simply too hot against your legs.

The Lapdesk solves this problem by giving you a rigid plastic top, so the normal ventilation gaps are preserved, meaning one happy laptop. It is practically the same as having your notebook on a table. It has a glossy finish, with no grip of its own, so you’ll be dependent on the little rubber feet on the bottom of your PC for security.

The underside of the Lapdesk features a pad, with a 12-degree angle at one end. This means that when perched on your knee, the surface sits at a slight angle. When you use a desktop computer the keyboard is typically angled because (for most people) this is a more comfortable angle for typing, allowing your fingers to fall naturally on the keys without over-reaching. The Lapdesk recreates this position making it more comfortable to type on than when flat and also meaning it is easier to see all the keys.

But the pad on the underside isn’t a solid slab – it has a central cutout which means that you are not sitting with all that insulation on your knees, so whilst your laptop keeps cool, so do you. The meshed pad provides plenty of support for the platform meaning that the whole thing is stable as you bash away on the keyboard.

This all works fine whilst you are sitting in a chair, or stretched out on the sofa with your legs relatively flat, but you can also reverse the whole thing, providing you with a flatter platform if you want to sit with your legs bent, as you might do when lying in bed.

With the top measuring 440 x 280mm, Logitech say it will work with notebooks up to 17 inches. The thing you need to bear in mind is that this is only designed to sit your laptop on, not as a platform for your mouse or anything else. We found that a 15.4-inch notebook from Acer virtually filled the top and for those with larger desktop replacement models, the whole thing might be a little over-whelming.

The white plastic brings the Mac to mind and would partner well with the company’s older generation of machines. The grey mesh-covered pad is well attached and the whole thing looks and feels like a quality product. At least it won’t look out of place when you slip it under your designer sofa.

Our quick take

We found that the Logitech Comfort Lapdesk was an instant hit. A simple design, it does make a difference to how you use your laptop whilst sitting on the sofa and we found it very comfortable to use and very stable. Whilst some people thought it was a little clinical, they were soon won over when they started using it.

If you find yourself working on the sofa, then the Comfort Lapdesk does what it sets out to do, but some might decide that they can easily construct something similar themselves at home.