9. Noise: Is That A Fan I Hear?

While some laptops with ULV processors are indeed built around passive cooling solutions, Averatec chose to use an active cooling solution with a system fan instead.

Despite the Pentium M 733 ULV and a very low power dissipation of no more than 5 watts, Averatec opted for an active cooling solution.

When sitting idle or performing normal office productivity tasks, the laptop is completely silent - only hard drive activity will break the silence every now and then. During DVD playback, the system's noise level increases to 36 dB(A) in a room with an ambient noise level of 32 dB(A). For the most part, this soft whirring sound is produced by the optical drive and is not disturbing at all. When more CPU intensive tasks are performed, the active fan will quickly come on after a few seconds. However, it is just as quiet as the DVD drive. This moderate soundscape of 36 dB(A) can even be maintained when graphics intensive applications are added.

Altogether, the Averatec AV1050 is acoustically unobtrusive.

Case temperatures under full load are a different story, though. With the CPU under full load - which can happen rather quickly due to the moderate clock speed of only 1.1 GHz - we measured the temperature of the exhaust air coming from the system to be 128.5°F (53.6°C). As a result, the temperature on the bottom of the case reached up to 104°F (40°C) in some places. This makes using the laptop on your lap an unpleasantly hot experience.