You may want to use a closed laptop for any reason. But is your laptop built for this? In this article, we will examine this issue.
If you have connected your laptop to a secondary display, you may want to use it with the door closed to keep your desk space clean and tidy.
If you want to watch a movie and you connect it to the TV, you may close your laptop and it will play the movie in closed mode.
But there’s a theory that your laptop probably wasn’t designed to work well with the lid closed. Is it really like that?
The functionality of the laptop with the door closed depends on its design
The main concern when using a laptop with the lid closed is that it might not cool down enough. Tasks such as games or heavy renderings increase the temperature of the laptop a lot. If you have such use of your laptop, you can article The best gaming laptops in the market Read to guide you in buying.
However, this largely depends on the laptop cooling design. In the case of fanless and low-power laptops such as MacBook Air M1 or M2 There is no problem. You can even purchase special mounts designed just for this purpose.
On the other hand, if you have a workstation or gaming laptop, chances are the top of the laptop plays a role in ventilation. In this case, closing the door can affect the airflow. Some laptops are designed so that when the screen is open, it moves away from the surface of the table. With this kind of design, turning on and using the laptop with the lid closed is not a good idea.
If you are not sure whether your laptop works well with the lid closed, you can ask the manufacturer’s support.
Heat can damage the screen
Even if your laptop can do a good job of cooling the CPU and GPU with the lid closed, another downside is that the LCD panel can be damaged by being close to the hot body of the laptop during operation. Like any other electronic component, LCD panels have a maximum safe operating temperature. The exact numbers vary from device to device, but usually this temperature is between 40 and 60 degrees Celsius. Since a closed laptop screen traps a layer of air between it and the laptop body, it’s conceivable that the temperature between them would reach a point that would affect the life of the liquid crystal or screen coating.
Of course, it cannot be said for sure that the heat when operating the laptop with the door closed will damage the LCD display in the short or long term. However, it stands to reason that it is not a good idea to expose the LCD to temperatures outside of the room temperature range it was designed for.
What if we use cooling pads?
As a laptop base, cooling pads with cooling fans and vents remove heat from the vents and laptop body so that the internal fans don’t have to work hard.
In theory, this is not a bad idea either, but it depends a lot on the design of the laptop cooling system and the cooling pad itself. Even so, cooling pads provide a relatively small drop in temperature and don’t directly help cool the gap between the screen and the laptop body.
Using a laptop to download files overnight or as a server
Some users are not looking to use a laptop with the lid closed and connected to a separate screen. For example, you might use your old laptop as a home server or start heavy renderings or download large files that will finish overnight.
In this case, make sure that the ventilation valves are not blocked. Now, if you have made the settings of the laptop door to continue the activity in closed form, you can only use it for moderate tasks that do not lead to the production of much heat.
However, it is better to close the laptop door enough that the screen is off, but not completely closed. In this way, hot air does not directly hit the screen and ventilation is done well. Now your device can stay on and work for a long time. Do not forget that for better heat dissipation, it is necessary to clean the dust from the laptop regularly.
Is it really possible to have a problem when working with a laptop with the door closed?
If your laptop overheats or slows down when you close the lid, there is definitely a problem. To prevent this from happening, you should open the door as soon as possible. If you’re mainly concerned that exposure to heat will ruin your laptop screen, there’s no clear evidence that we can prove this. This means that users have been using several laptops with the door closed for years and have never encountered a screen failure due to heat. However, it is impossible to completely rule out the connection between extreme heat and monitor failure.
Finally, the best and safest possible way is to use a laptop with the lid open. If you are using a secondary monitor, it is better to set the HDMI port so that the laptop screen turns off after connecting. For this, use the keys Windows + P Use and then the option “Second screen onlyTap »
If you think that closing the door has aesthetic benefits and saves space, the possibility of using it in this way depends on the type of laptop, the type of use and the importance of the work.
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