Author: Wayne Ihamäki Date: July 20, 2008 Manufacturer: CoolJag

Page 1: Introduction

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The folks at CoolJag sent us a cool programmable LED flash fan. Don't worry, I didn't know what that was either. We'll hook one up and show how much bling this thing adds to one's case. We were in for a surprise.

Packaging


It's really unfortunate that CoolJag can't have this unit in action on the store shelves, or people would really be interested. (A computer store would be wise to have this working in a case if you ask me.) Perhaps they could of show some better pictures on the packaging to attract more attention. The best 'action' shot on the back reads 'YOU NAME HERE' which butchers the English language even more then I usually do. Thankfully you're reading this review, so you'll know it's what is inside that counts.

Contents


Installation

Inside you have the fan, screws and power wire. Besides that standard affair, there's a USB stick, data transfer wire, and an installation CD. To program the unit, you hook the data transfer wire between the fan and the USB stick. The next step is to 'flash' the device using the software. Easy.


The software install is pretty straight forward. And once you get the program running it's pretty straight forward. The only problem I had was it wouldn't let me 'Preview' or 'Demo All'. But no fear, I just burnt the info to the fan. Once removing the data cable, the fan was plugged in and everything worked out just fine.

In Use


It wasn't noticed until starting up the fan that it was upside down. Not a big deal, but for anyone doing this themselves, turn it on before mounting it just to be sure.


Capital letters look better then lower-case. One can also use extended ASCII characters such as the 'ä'.


The fan will also show you the current temperature.


Before one goes out and gets this type of fan, remember it won't be as visible if hiding behind a grill. Although it doesn't photograph very well with the room lights on, the fan is actually bright enough to see in a brightly lite environment. One drawback is that the letters will only show up when the fan is spinning at full throttle. At that speed, there's a little fan noise. Hooking it to a fan controller and turning the RPM's down stopped the display of the letters. However, by cranking up the fan speed, you can show-off when you want to.

Conclusion


This turned out to be a really cool fan. Everyone young or old who saw it thought it was neat. It was a very hard product to photograph. The camera picks up the glow around the edges that the human eye does not. In real life the lettering is a more brighter, crispier red. The noise isn't bad, but I found hooking it up the fan controller the best solution for me. This way it can be set for either dark and quiet, or flashy all-out performance. The installation was a breeze, so effort-wise, if you wanted to add a little bling without allot of effort, this might be the product for you.

Pros

• Total eye-grabbing feature.
• Easy installation/Good instructions.
• Three different sizes available. (80,90, and 120mm)
• Can do many different standard and non-standard characters.
• Inexpensive.

Cons

• Can't turn fan speed down without deactivating LED lettering.
• Not unbearable, but does produce some noise at normal speed.

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