Instead of doing a review of the phone, we’re doing the accessory first – and one of the most crucial accessories for the ROG Phone series is its cooler. For every generation of the ROG Phone, there is an accompanying cooler too. The ROG Phone 7 Ultimate is a bit special – the AeroActive Cooler 7 comes bundled in the box too – alongside a pouch so you can carry the cooler in your bag without getting damaged.
That aside, the cooler got beefed up quite a lot. In today’s today, we’ll be taking a look at what’s new, what’s improved, if this cooler is any good, and if it is worth buying. We’ll also be compared it with last generation’s AeroActive Cooler 6 too.
Let’s begin.
Since we have the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate – the triangular box has both the AeroActive Cooler 7 and also the accompanying case. This design language is similar to what we had before – and I’m still going to call it the “bikini case” because it’s practically just providing some protection around the sides and a majority of the back is exposed.
Looking at the cooler itself, we can see that the AeroActive Cooler 7 is a lot larger than its predecessor. It has have a lot of positive benefits that we’ll get into later, but that means carrying the cooler around will be more annoying. The pouch works, but what if I just want to put the entire phone with the cooler attached into my pocket? Even someone like me who exclusively wears cargo pants feel that it is a bit too big.
The overall design has changed a lot. The middle black piece with the fan and TEC – thermoelectric cooler – is a lot bigger and has larger cutouts for airflow. Even the fan is different as there are more fan blades for the AeroActive Cooler 7.
What I do like is that the power button is now recessed so that I wouldn’t accidentally press it as compared to what happened on the ROG Phone 6, and the release latch button is also not that easy to press now. These are two very good improvements.
Both coolers also have 4 buttons that can be remapped in games – L1, L2, R1, R2. The shape of the buttons are also different – specifically the contour. I did say that the previous generation AeroActive Cooler 6 is not ergonomic enough to use since the L2 and R2 buttons were just not ergonomic to use because the buttons bend sideways. Now, they made the L2 and R2 buttons easier to actuate and can be pressed downwards. You can still bend it sideways to actuate if you want to.
And here’s where I’ll talk about the comfort of using the phone with the coolers. Both the ROG Phone 6 and ROG Phone 7 series are exactly the same in terms of their shape and size – so the only varying factor here is the cooler.
Because of the bigger – and subsequently wider form factor of the AeroActive Cooler 7, my grip on the phone feels a lot better. My ring fingers can rest properly on the L2 and R2 buttons without it feeling weird. Combined with the aforementioned improvement to these two buttons, it just feels so different.
Since the way I grip the device changed, I can actually use all 6 buttons without worrying that the entire contraption will drop off my hands. 2 virtual buttons from the phone’s AirTriggers, and 4 physical buttons from the cooler.
While this new cooler has improved ergonomics, it still isn’t the best. If I’m playing a game that requires me to utilize all of those 6 buttons, I still have to be careful not to drop the device. I would’ve preferred some grip that I can actually hold – like an Xbox controller or something similar.
The L1 and R1 buttons do feel identical – so I don’t have anything to talk about it. They feel fantastic to use just as usual.
Now, as a cooler, is the AeroActive Cooler 7 actually good? Honestly, this is where I’ll say the cooler functionality is pretty much not necessary. In our gaming test, we already determined that the phone can cool down the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 so well to the point that it’s below 40°C. Yes, that is with Genshin Impact at the highest graphical settings at 60fps with X Mode enabled.
Remember, the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate has the Aero Portal as well. The little flap opens up to reveal a copper heat sink, and with the AeroActive Cooler 7 attached, it blows air across the heat sink to further cool down the chipset. But since the performance is the same, the Aero Portal feature is also not necessary.
That is amazing, honestly. Frame rates were consistently at 60fps and there were no stutters at all. Remember – the phone can do all this even without the cooler.
So, I took things to the extreme. I used the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme stress test benchmark that runs the benchmark 20 times in a row to see if the phone ever heats up to the point that it thermal throttles. If it does, then there will be a huge discrepancy between the best and worst loop. Well… the result is actually good very good as the phone can maintain the performance without thermal throttling at all – but that also means the cooler is unnecessary.
I ran the benchmark a few more times with different modes of cooling – because you can select whether you want the cooler to be “smart”, cool, frosty, or frozen modes. I did this because I want to know if we can extract even more performance – and from what we can see here, we can’t. The result for all benchmark tests is within the margin of error. This double confirms that the cooler is pretty much unnecessary.
That means if I have the AeroActive Cooler 6, I can save some money and skip this new cooler, right? Technically, yes. If we don’t care about the improved ergonomics and we’re looking at the perspective of cooling performance only, then it doesn’t matter if we’re using the AeroActive Cooler 6 or 7 – the phone is already cool enough even without the cooler.
So, why should we get the AeroActive Cooler 7? It actually has three specialties. The first one is a built-in subwoofer. Yeah, the cooler has a subwoofer and that is why it has two pogo pins beside the USB-C port. It actually does make quite a huge difference too – have a listen to this comparison here.
Oh, the kickstand angle is also different on the new AeroActive Cooler 7. I’ll say that combined with the subwoofer and its front-facing stereo speakers, the ROG Phone 7 becomes a fantastic portable video-watching device.
The second advantage of the AeroActive Cooler 7 is the return of the audio jack. Yeah, this audio jack on the cooler was present on the AeroActive Coolers 3 and 5, but they removed it on the 6. Now, they brought it back.
The third advantage – according to what ROG showed us – is that the little air funnel can redirect airflow from the fan behind to the screen. In my mind, I thought that this means the cooler can create a breeze to cool down our thumbs too but in reality, the air funnel does nothing impactful. I can’t feel any breeze, and our thermal camera can’t even see any sort of cool air blowing out from that funnel.
I wouldn’t call this an “advantage” but it’s there.
And overall, I do like how the new AeroActive Cooler 7 is designed. It seems like ROG realized that the phone itself can already sustain the performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 without overheating, so they added more actually useful features like a subwoofer while also improving the ergonomics.
But what if you want to use the new AeroActice Cooler 7 with the ROG Phone 6? Well, you can’t. Even though the cooler fits 100% perfectly, the ROG Phone 6 doesn’t detect the cooler. Before you head down to the comments and say that the pogo pins might be the issue, no. I thought the pogo pins might create a short circuit and disable the cooler entirely – but no, it still doesn’t work.
Then, I did the same to the ROG Phone 7 and I taped off the pogo pins. The cooler still works but with the subwoofer disabled. That means the software is locking the ROG Phone 6 from using this new cooler.
It might be the same situation as the ROG Phone 5 with the AeroActive Cooler 6 whereby we’ll have to wait for a software update to add the compatibility, but I’m not sure if that’s the case here since ROG didn’t even announce an AeroActive Cooler 7 for ROG Phone 6.
Oh – one last thing to mention. The AeroActive Cooler 7 is only included with the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate. If you’re buying the ROG Phone 7 only, then you’ll have to purchase the cooler separately. I do not have the price for this cooler just yet – but we’ll update it in the description and the pinned comment below. Do subscribe while you’re on the way there.
And that’s it. While the new AeroActive Cooler 7 is rather unnecessary in terms of cooling the device, it offers other forms of utility like the extra buttons and a subwoofer.
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